Brazil today and tomorrow

by L. E. Elliott Joyce

To Fernão Dias was due the exploration of what is now the State of Minas Geraes, the whole of it falling practically under his sway as the founder of at least a dozen towns in that hilly interior, the majority surviving to this day. His search had a curious sequel: his son-in-law and faithful aide, Borba Gato, who had found gold mines in Sabará and registered them in 1700, was returning to S. Paulo after the death of his leader when he met with a party headed by the official Administrator General of Mines. Borba Gato’s charts and proofs were demanded, refused, a quarrel broke out, and the servants of the pioneer set upon the Administrator and killed him. Not daring to face S. Paulo with this tale, Borba Gato fled to the interior where a tribe of Indians friendly to him dwelt by the Rio Doce, and there lived hidden out of the reach of the law for twenty years. At the end of that time, attempts to find the Sabará mines having failed, he was offered a pardon in exchange for the secret; he accepted the offer, returned to civilization, and presently retiring to a farm with his family died peacefully in his bed at the age of ninety.

A direct result of the murder of the Administrator was the stocking of the sertão of Minas with cattle: the entourage of the dead man, as much horrified by the deed as was Borba Gato, instead of returning to the capital took to the bush with the seeds, stores and livestock without which no expedition set out, and formed nuclei of fazendas in a score of different places.

One of the earliest discoveries of gold in Brazil was made by Bartholomeu Bueno da Silva in the Serra Doirada, in Goyaz, about 1682. He it was who found the Indians wearing scraps of gold as ornament, and tricked them into showing the place of its origin; displaying a bowl of agua-ardente (aguardente—spirit made from sugarcane) he set light to it, telling the Indians that it was water and that he would in like manner set fire to all their springs and rivers if they did not reveal the source of their gold. Southey calls Bartholomeu Bueno “the most renowned adventurer of his age,” and to him is due the opening-up of Goyaz, until then only entered by passing slave-hunters: but his discoveries were not followed up and it remained for his son, nicknamed by the Indians Anhangoera the Second his father having been known to them as Old Devil the First on account of the incident referred to above, to re-find the mines and extend the gold-mining fever to Goyaz. It was in 1722 that this son, then a man of over fifty years, succeeded in obtaining government help for exploration: by this time Minas was overrun with gold seekers from every part of Brazil and the authorities were ready to give active help to new mining expeditions. This bandeira set out with great éclat, crossed the Rio Grande and wandered for three years, the leader seeking landmarks dimly remembered from his boyhood. Persistent, patient, conciliating his weary followers, he founded the town of Barra, at last located the gold mines, returned to São Paulo and got together a new band of men, led the way back and settled them at what is now the City of Goyaz, and so closed with a remarkable colonizing feat the last of the great expeditions into the high sertão.

The Falls of Iguassú.
On the boundary of Argentina with Brazil; this series of lovely cascades is said to have altogether four times as much force as Niagara.

A little later gold-miners penetrating to Matto Grosso began operating at Cuyabá,[^[3]] and almost immediately the discovery of diamonds at Diamantina brought a new rush of people into this far interior region. The day of the explorer, the true bandeirante, was over, and the age of mining was by this time in its epoch of greatest excitement.

Few writers on Brazil have refrained from scourging the bandeirantes for their cruelty to the wretched natives and for their destruction of the Jesuit missions. It is true that they were brutal, but theirs was a brutal age, and in explanation, not extenuation, of their deeds it should be remembered that they, the white civilian colonists, were fighting for their own preservation against hostile Indians whose hand, quite naturally, was against the invader, and secondly against their economic ruin by the line of action taken by the Society of Jesus. Not only did the patient Jesuits coax and catechise the Indian, but they put him to work in the fields and sold abroad the product of his hands: when later on conflict raged in North Brazil between colonists and Jesuits the chief grievance was that the Society, for whose support the civilian community was taxed heavily, used the Indian labour denied by Royal decree to the settlers, and also maintained great stores (armazens) where every kind of European merchandise was kept.

It was for this reason, and not because they were bad Christians, that the colonists of Maranhão once stood on the shore with guns in their hands and refused to allow a shipload of Jesuits to land until they had given a solemn promise to do nothing with the Indians except to convert them; they regarded the members of this religious body as business rivals. Nor were the Jesuits tactful in their dealings with colonists or colonial government authorities; secure in the support given them not only by the Pope but, especially perhaps in the period of Spanish rule in Brazil under Philip II, by the King, they made no concessions, defied the civilians, and apparently courted trials of strength: right or wrong, they were able to count upon judgment in their favour in any quarrel referred to Europe.

When the bandeirantes began their unmerciful raids upon the Jesuit communities in the south Brazilian sertão the number of missions had increased from thirteen in 1610 to twenty-one in 1628, and to them had been largely drawn the natives who once, as Thomé de Souza said in writing to Portugal, had been so thick that “even if they were killed for market there would be no end of them.” Attacked, the padres might well have counted upon help from the Governor General of Brazil, but for the fact that about this time the whole military attention of the authorities was taken up with the determined aggressions of the Dutch upon the northern capitanias; the affairs of São Paulo were left in the hands of the Paulistas. The great matter of regret is that in the case of the Jesuits much excellent constructive work was wasted, just as the fine colonizing work of the French in Rio and in Pará and Maranhão was destroyed, and that of the Dutch on the Amazon and in Pernambuco; the spirit and the interests of the times forbade the Portuguese to allow settlers of other races a foothold in Brazil, but nevertheless it was unfortunate that so much good blood and good work was thrown away in a huge land that so badly needed both.

While the Paulistas were exploring and adding great tracts to the colony in the south, a law unto themselves, undisturbed by invasion except an occasional attempt by the Spaniards from the Plate and attacks on S. Vicente by English and French corsairs, the history of the north was one of constant aggression and desperate defence. Until the year 1578 no concerted attempts were made by England, France and Holland against the colonies of Portugal, a country towards which feeling was not unfriendly but in that year King Sebastião of Portugal, with the flower of his nobility was killed in North Africa in the terrible battle of Alcazar el Kebir, and Philip II of Spain, the “Demon of the Middle Ages,” seized Portugal and all that was Portuguese two years later. The South American colonies automatically came under his sway, and at once fell heir to the feud between Spain and her European neighbours. Brazil was fair game, and during the sixty years that elapsed before Portugal was able to re-assert her independence the easily approached northern capitanias were threatened, sacked and occupied by one or another of the three chief enemies of Spain. Sackings of coast towns made no great difference to the development of Brazil; when the ransom was paid the raiders sailed away and the business of life was resumed without any vital change; no towns were ever ruined by such predatory visits. Occupation of districts was another matter, and, with the exception of loss of lives every one of which was precious in young colonies, the effect was good rather than harmful; the period of Dutch rule on the northern coast of Brazil was a lasting beneficial stimulus. Nor was Spanish control of any direct hurt to the Portuguese colonies: their internal management was little interfered with, Portuguese officials continued to be appointed to Brazilian posts, and if Spain did not adequately defend them because her hands were already desperately full she at least did Brazil the kindness to leave it alone. The one serious administrative measure she took was the formation in Lisbon of a Junta to care for Brazilian commerce, similar to the Council of the Indies sitting in Madrid, and this was undoubtedly useful: the narrow monopolistic trading policy pursued was simply in line with the ideas and practice of the times. It was protection carried to an extreme, was useful at the time of its initiation, and, if it outlived its usefulness in its most irksome manifestations, the principle has so far survived that today, in the third lustre of the twentieth century, it may be said that only one great commercial nation has ever definitely thrown it aside.