Spanish and Portuguese South America during the Colonial Period; Vol. 1 of 2

by Robert Grant Watson

The date at which the first Portuguese settler established himself in Bahia was about 1510. The name of this pioneer was Diogo Alvarez, the sole survivor of a crew wrecked to the north of that beautiful bay. He made himself useful to the natives, and being the fortunate possessor of a musket and some gunpowder, he so impressed their imaginations that they presently made him their chief. After a time, taking advantage of the visit of a French vessel, he was enabled to return to Europe and to initiate a trade between France and the region in which his lot was cast. He likewise desired that his countrymen should colonize the province; but the Portuguese Government were disposed rather to lend assistance towards establishing a trade between their own and distant countries than to encourage agricultural settlements abroad. For this reason, Brazil, which, from the nature of its population, offered but scanty inducements to traders, was neglected for many years after its discovery. At length, however, it became of sufficient importance to attract attention, and the system was adopted, which had succeeded in other Portuguese settlements, of apportioning it out into captaincies, extending, as a rule, each for fifty leagues along the coast.

1531

The first person who took possession of one of these captaincies was Martim Affonso de Sousa, afterwards governor of the Portuguese possessions in India, and who had the distinction of carrying St. Francis Xavier to the East. He has the honour of having discovered the bay on which was to rise the future capital of Brazil, and which, under the belief that it was the estuary of a river, he named Rio de Janeiro, having discovered it on the first of January.

Having surveyed the coast southward to the Plata, he selected as a spot for a settlement an island in the twenty-fourth degree of southern latitude, and was fortunate enough to conciliate the good-will of the neighbouring population through the medium of a ship-wrecked Portuguese sailor whom he found amongst them. This colony soon removed to the island of S. Vicente, from which the captaincy was named. Here Martim Affonso introduced the sugar-cane, and reared the first cattle known to that region.

Amongst the other captaincies founded about this period were those of S. Amaro, which adjoined S. Vicente, and Espirito Santo to the north. Next came the captaincy of Porto Seguro, where Cabral had landed on first taking possession of Brazil. Here sugar-works were established with considerable success. Beyond came the captaincy of the Ilheos or Isles, so called from a river with three islands near its bar. The town of old S. Paulo was soon afterwards founded.

The coast from the San Francisco river to the point of Padram de Bahia was granted to Francisco Coutinho, a distinguished Fidalgo, to whom was likewise assigned that beautiful bay with its surrounding creeks and hundred islands. It may be mentioned, as showing the mixture of Portuguese and native blood which from the earliest settlement existed in the Brazilian race, that two of Coutinho’s followers married daughters of the first Portuguese settler, Diogo Alvarez, the mothers of whom were native women. A son of one of the neighbouring chiefs having been killed by the Portuguese, the savages attacked Coutinho, and after seven years of hostilities compelled him to abandon his settlement and retreat to the adjoining captaincy of the Isles. He was afterwards treacherously slain.

One other captaincy was established about this time—that of Pernambuco, the chief town of which, from its lovely situation, received the suggestive name of Olinda. The tribe occupying the vicinity were called Cahetes, and have handed down to this day the remarkable wicker-work catamarans, which those who have landed at Pernambuco are not likely to forget. From this savage tribe, Coelho, to whom the grant was assigned, had to conquer by inches what had been granted to him by leagues; he was even attacked and besieged in his town. By degrees, however, and by the aid of an alliance with another tribe, he at length established himself in his captaincy.

The captaincy of Maraham was assigned to John de Barros, the historian, who, dividing his grant with two others, undertook a scheme of conquest as well as of colonization, sending out from Portugal an expedition of nine hundred men. Fortune, however, did not smile upon the enterprise. The fleet was wrecked on some shoals, and the survivors escaped to the island which bears the above-mentioned name.

It does not lie within the compass of this work to go into the condition of the native tribes in any part of South America previously to the arrival of the Spaniards and Portuguese. It will be sufficient to indicate the materials, whether European, native, mixed, or African, of which the several States of South America were composed at the period of their declaring themselves independent of Spain and Portugal, respectively. We therefore pass over much that is interesting, as told by the early writers, of the condition of the tribes as they were found by the settlers in Brazil, a résumé of which may be found in the pages of Southey. There is not much of an active nature to relate in the history of the several captaincies at this period beyond a tale of successive little wars, in which the Portuguese were for the most part allied with some one native tribe against another.

1549.