J'

NUNC COGNOSCO EX PARTE

THOMAS J. BATA LI BRARY

TRENT UNIVERSITY
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THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY STUDIES IN
HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL SCIENCE

Under the Direction of the Departments of History,

Political Economy, and Political Science

Series LX Number 1
 Adapted from F. A. de Varnhagen, Historia geral do Brasil (2d ed., 2 vols., Rio de
Janeiro [1877]), I, 134; and Samuel Whittemore Boggs, International Boundaries (New
York, 1940), p. 78 (by permission of the Columbia University Press).

• • • • « e Two interpretations of the line of demarcation of the Treaty of

Tordesillas, June 7, 1494
Approximate line of Portuguese occupation, Treaty of Madrid,
January 13, 1750

Captaincies of Brazil, circa 1535

I. Martim Affonso de Sousa VII. Francisco Pereira Coutinho

II. Pero Lopes de Sousa VIII. Duarte Coelho
III. Pedro de Goes IX. Joao de Barros and Aires da Cunha
IV. Vasco Fernandes Coutinho X. Joao de Barros and Aires da Cunha
V. Pedro do Campo Tourinho XI. Antonio Cardoso de Barros
VI. Jorge de Figueiredo Correa XII. Fernando Alvares de Andrade
FROM BARTER TO SLAVERY
The Economic Relations of Portuguese and

Indians in the Settlement of Brazil,

mo-mo

By

ALEXANDER MARCHANT
Instructor in History, College for Teachers
The Johns Hopkins University

GLOUCESTER, MASS.

PETER SMITH

1966
\ CM
' Jcx K? * WVSf z> 1 ^ C?£o

Copyright, 1942
THE JOHNS HOPKINS PRESS
Reprinted, 1966 by Permission of
THE JOHNS HOPKINS PRESS
 PREFACE

The expansion overseas of the peoples of Europe in the

sixteenth century and after has long attracted the attention of
students of history. Quite aside from its being justified as a
subject of study by its extensive and deep influence on the
peoples of Europe and other parts of the world, its preoccu¬
pation with the meeting of different civilizations gives it a
peculiar interest and appeal. In general, the examination of
expansion has fallen into three categories. One contains coloni¬
zation itself, a study in which nation after nation in its rise and
fall is shown to contribute new motives or new methods to a
general pattern of establishing and maintaining colonies.
Another, concerning itself with the regions where the Europeans
went, has led to the writing of the history of the nations into
which some of the colonies developed. The third is a loose
and capacious affair, a weighing of the effect of expansion on
Europe itself. Though that effect has often been calculated in
sober descriptions of interregional commerce and other studies,
the influence of far horizons on the history of ideas has not
been neglected.
From among the many phases of European expansion one
only has been selected for discussion here. The large frame
from which it has been taken is the expansion of the Portuguese,
first into Africa, next into India, and, at last, into Brazil. The
Portuguese had a peculiar place as the small nation that in
many things led the way for the rest of Europe. As heirs and
careful husbandmen of the science of the Mediterranean, they
domesticated the stars and harnessed the winds to become some
of the first of modern blue-water sailors. Not charged with
safeguarding the West, they were free to forge the weapons
with which other nations later held more than the East in fee.
The implications of their skill, of their place in their peninsula
and among European nations—these are interesting matters,
but ones that here have been set on one side for the moment.
Within the broad limits of their going overseas, only their
manner of dealing with new lands has here been discussed, and,
7

275314
8 Preface

within the restriction of the study to that matter, one aspect

alone has been emphasized. What were the economic relations
of the Portuguese with the natives of Brazil when the settlement
of Brazil was undertaken?
My thanks to those who have helped me in the preparation
of this study go first to Dr. Frederic Chapin Lane, of the Johns
Hopkins University. I owe him a debt that began to run even
before I commenced under his direction the dissertation from
which this study has grown. My thanks go also to Dr. Alan
Krebs Manchester, of Duke University, who, knowing my work
and having read that dissertation, aided the preparation of this
study with criticisms drawn from the depths of his knowledge
of Brazil.
I thank Dr. Kent Roberts Greenfield, Chairman of the De¬
partment of History of the Johns Hopkins University, and Dr.
Leonardo Olschki, who have read the text and who have made
many helpful suggestions. I also record my debt to the late
Dr. James Alexander Robertson, who for some years before his
death criticized my work with his inimitable gentle scepticism
and gave me freely of his vast knowledge. To Dr. James Fitton
Couch I offer my thanks, thanks that do not begin to express
my indebtedness to him.
Last, but by no means least, I offer my thanks to the members
of the Historical Seminar of the Johns Hopkins University.

A. M.
Washington, D. C.
May, 1942.
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE
List of Abbreviations. 11

Chapter

I. Introduction . 13

II. Brazilwood Traders and Coastguards. 28

III. The Donatarios . 48

IV. The Royal Government:

Tome de Sousa, the Jesuits, and the Barter

System . 81

V. The Royal Government:

Duarte de Costa, Men de Sa, and the Jesuits. . 102

VI. The Royal Government:

circa 1580 . 123

Appendix . 141

Bibliographical Note. 144

Index . 153

9
1
 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

Anchieta Cartas, informaqoes, jragmentos historicos e sermoes de Padre

Joseph de Anchieta, S.J. {1554-1594), ed. Afranio Peixoto.
" Publicagoes da Academia Brasileira: Cartas Jesuiticas III ”
(Rio de Janeiro, 1933).
CA Cartas avulsas de Jesuitas, 1550-1568, ed. Afranio Peixoto.
" Publicagoes da Academia Brasileira: Cartas Jesuiticas II ”
(Rio de Janeiro, 1931).
DH Documentos historicos (41 vols. to date, 1928—). (Vols. I-II
published by the Archivo Nacional; III-XXXIV by the Bi-
blioteca Nacional; XXXV-XLI by the Ministerio de Educagao
e Saude: Biblioteca Nacional. Various editors.) (Rio de
Janeiro, 1928—.)
HCP Hist or ia da colonizaqao portuguesa do Brasil: Ediqao monu¬
mental comemorativa do primeiro centenario da independencia
do Brasil, ed. Carlos Malheiro Dias (3 vols., Porto, 1924-26).
Nobrega Manuel da Nobrega, Cartas do Brasil, 1549-1560, eds. Valle
Cabral and Rodolpho Garcia. " Publicagoes da Academia Bra¬
sileira: Cartas Jesuiticas I” (Rio de Janeiro, 1931).
Soares, Tratado Gabriel Soares de Sousa, Tratado descriptivo do Brasil em 1587.
Ediqao castigada pelo estudo e exame de muitos codices manu-
scriptos existentes no Brasil, em Portugal, Hespanha, e Fran q a,
e accrescentada de alguns commentarios por Francisco Adolpho
de Varnhagem (3d ed., Sao Paulo, 1938).

11
*
 Chapter I

INTRODUCTION
On April 22, 1500, Pedro Alvares Cabral was sailing in the
South Atlantic more than 17° below the equator. He had
left Lisbon forty-four days before, bound for India in the
wake of Vasco da Gama, but, leaving Portugal and Africa
behind, he bore farther west than Vasco had done. Far off on
his western horizon, he saw against the evening sky a long, low
shadow of land dominated by a high round mountain. He had
discovered Brazil.
Although driven by a storm as he approached this shore, he
found his way to a fine harbor in 17° S. Before him, low
and level beyond the sparkling water and the shining sand of
the beach, lay a wooded plain traversed by a stream. The land
seemed vast and to have much water and good air, and, in that
latitude, a climate as temperate as that of parts of Portugal.
Gold, silver, and other metals seemed to be lacking, but the
soil seemed fertile and there was an abundance of brazilwood
trees, a useful dyewood. What sort of people were in the land
Cabral did not at first know. Bound to India, he perhaps ex¬
pected to find the Oriental potentates and their subjects whom
Vasco had met, for when some natives were brought to him, he
received them in his ship sitting in a chair on a carpet, in fine
clothes and with a great gold collar around his neck. But the
naked savages before him on the deck did not possess the elabo¬
rate civilization of India. Their agriculture was neither ex-1
tensive nor complicated, and their villages were simply huts
surrounded by palings in a clearing of the woods. Gentle and
friendly, timid at first but growing bolder, they seemed fit sub-(
jects for conversion to Christianity. Unplagued by the wars of
the Hindus and the Mohammedans, not involved in the pepper
trade and unconscious of the commercial rivalry of Lisbon and
Venice, they painted their shapely bodies with red and black
dyes and danced and sang on the beaches. Of these people and
their land, Cabral took possession on May 1, and, in the name

13
14 From Barter to Slavery

of the King, bestowed on the land the name of Terra da Vera

Cruz. Then, taking on wood and water, he weighed anchor
and on May 2 sailed on to India.1
The relations of natives with Europeans, whether in America
or in other continents, have attracted the attention of many
scholars, as dozens of general and special studies amply show.
Some students of colonization quickly dismiss the natives as the
rather ineffectual persons who provided incidents of war or
peace in the great business of European expansion. Not a few
writers readily discover in them the noble savage free of the
chains of European institutions in lands from China to Peru.
Others find only a backward people whose lives and futures
were settled at diplomatic or industrial conferences a continent
or two away. Colonization has not been the only interest
inspiring the many superstructures of interpretation built on the
meeting of Europeans and natives. Philologists have recorded
in a variety of European systems of phonetics the sounds with
which natives speak. Anthropologists on many a beach the
world around have measured native skulls, while archaeologists,
not entirely content with the living, have pursued even older
natives back across whole oceans of time.
Though the natives of Brazil have not been slighted, some
aspects of their contact with Europeans have received more
attention than others. Because the Portuguese became the most
widely spread of the Europeans in eastern South America,
Brazilian and Portuguese scholars have been interested mainly
in the meeting of native customs with Portuguese civilization.
Philologists have been engrossed in the study of the changes
wrought in the Portuguese language when it was forced to
assimilate the unfamiliar objects and ideas of the new world.
Some historians have investigated the importance of the Indian
in the formation of a Brazilian nationalism, and others have

1 The description of the discovery of Brazil by Cabral is drawn from the letter
to Dom Manuel by Vaz de Caminha, scribe of the fleet. The letter appears in
full, in Carlos Malheiro Dias, ed., Histdria da coloniza^ao portuguesa do Brasil:
Edifao monumental comemorativa do primeiro centenario da independenc'ta do
Brasil (3 vols., Porto, 1924-26), II, 84-99. (Referred to hereafter as HCP,
followed by volume number.) For an English translation, see R. B. Greenlee, ed.,
Cabral’s Voyage to Brazil and India (Hakluyt Society, 2d series, LXXXI,
London, 1938), pp. 5-33.
 Introduction 15

balanced and counterbalanced such evanescent subjects of study

as the concept of the deity held by various tribes. Principally,
however, the interest of scholars in the Brazilian natives has
been in the biological and social effects of Portuguese settle¬
ment. The mixing of the red of the natives with the white of
the Portuguese has long offered a simple interpretation of the
settlement of Brazil and, indeed, of the strength of the Brazilian
character. Though interest in this interpretation has today been
equalled and perhaps superseded by an equal interest in the
effect of the black of the Negro on Portuguese and native Brazil,
the bulk of the writings about the natives, it is safe to say, deals /
mainly with the intermarriage of Europeans and natives. /
The one aspect that has long been neglected in studying the
first century of Brazilian history is the economic relation be¬
tween the Portuguese and the natives. It is surprising that this
neglect exists, for, though interest in economic aspects of
Brazilian history is both recent and comparatively little, it must
not be forgotten that for almost a century the natives and the
Portuguese were all but alone in Brazil. The exceptions were
some French who from time to time boldly established camps
on the coast and who came close to wresting possession of
the land from the Portuguese;2 a few boatloads of shipwrecked
Spaniards who trespassed on Portuguese lands; a German or
two; and, toward the end of the century, some Englishmen and
Dutchmen who maintained themselves alive despite the Portu¬
guese and the natives. The white Europeans were not the only
strangers who were few in number. The Negroes, who later
became the sinews and strength of the economy of the northeast
of Brazil, did not begin to reach Brazil in quantities until after
the decade of 1570. Further, they did not begin to come in
many thousands every year until even later, and, what is more,
they came principally to only one part of the country. Thus, the
Portuguese, few in number as they were, for almost a century ^
had no one from whom to seek aid except the natives of Brazil.
Because the relations of the Portuguese with the natives were

»An account of the French threat to Brazil may be found in J. Gomes de

Carvalho, D. Jodo III e os jrancezes (Porto, 1912), E. Guenin, Ango et ses
pilotes (Paris, 1901), and Antonio Baiao and C. Malheiro Dias, "A expedicao
de Christovao Jacques,” HCP, III, 59-94.
16 From Barter to Slavery

to a large extent determined by the purposes for which they

came, a small digression into the practices of Portuguese expan¬
sion is needed to show with what expectations and what
preparation the Portuguese approached Brazil. At the time of
its discovery, they had had considerable experience in coloni¬
zation and trade with the Atlantic islands and the mainland of
Africa and had already gone on to attempt the domination of
the rich trade routes of the Indian Ocean. They were used to
sailing far from home to live on island plantations or to traffic
with natives, and they were accustomed to seeing ships in Lisbon
filled with crops or laden with gold and ivory and slaves. Canny
in trading, they had laid out these wares during the fifteenth
century to build up a commerce that reached all parts of western
Europej" Though during much of the sixteenth century they
neglecte'cl'Brazil and let it lie beside their main interest in India,3
they had ready at hand several practices with which in time to
make Brazil their own and to add whatever it might produce
to the existing flow of their commerce.
Prince Henry the Navigator set the model for the later coloni¬
zation of Brazil when he began his attack on Africa, for,
knowing the mainland to be in the hands of the Moors who
had first to be subdued, he preferred to begin by colonizing the
Atlantic islands. He took up a project begun before his time
and, between 1400 and 1425, began to colonize Madeira and the
Azores and to divide them up into captaincies. The governing
and many of the economic benefits of the islands he gave to the
fidalgos, the noblemen, among the people who had first landed
there. These captains, or donatdrios (those to whom the land
had been given) held their land from the crown and in return
owed the crown certain taxes and the defense of the islands.
The economic development of the islands was of interest to
the donatarios because the export of products to Portugal was
the way to make money; the taxation of that development was
of interest to the crown as a source of revenue. Partly through
private initiative and partly through royal encouragement, much

3 For examination of evidence to show how Brazil lay outside the interest in
India, see my article, " Colonial Brazil As a Way Station for the Portuguese
India Fleets,” Geographical Review, Vol. XXXI, No. 3 (July, 1941), pp. 454-
465.
 Introduction 17
of the cultivable land was planted in sugar, and the islands
became one of the important sources of the European sugar
trade. The arrangement between the crown and the donatarios
and the settlers was mutually beneficial. A productive colony
was added at small cost to the holdings of the crown, and the
peoples of that colony were aided on occasion by the crown.
The model of colonization on these islands was followed by
the Portuguese in the settlement of the Cape Verde islands, and,
after the death of Prince Henry, in that of Sao Tome and other
islands.
When the Portuguese went to trade or to fight on the West
African coast, they met with circumstances different from those
on the islands, and, though their aims remained the same, they
were forced to use different methods. In Africa itself, the
Portuguese were, in the main, trading rivals of the Moslems,
and, competing with them, were trying to monopolize an exist¬
ing trade. To control that trade, the Portuguese depended on
a number of factories placed at strategic trading points on the
coast. At the head of each factory was a factor, a royal official.
He was to deal with native traders and to buy goods from them
at as low prices as possible, to keep those goods on hand, and
to supervise loading them on ships for Portugal. Under him a
scribe or a number of scribes recorded transactions. The factory
was an economic unit, but one that, by reason of its sometimes
being planted in the territory of people hostile to the Portuguese,
occasionally might acquire a political significance. Defense of
the factory from natives or commercial rivals of whatever dis¬
position was the care of a royal soldier who at times used his
troops to subdue native chieftains reluctant to trade with the
Portuguese factor. Where trade was possible under treaties
with native rulers which reduced the possibility of constant
warfare, the fortifications might be slight. Where the harbor
or other site of the factory was of strategic military importance,
as a way station for ships, for instance, then the factory might
be entirely subordinated to the fortress that was to exercise the
not essentially economic function of dominating the site and
keeping it in Portuguese hands.
The flexible commercial system that developed with the
growth of overseas outposts had the advantage of royal support
18 From Barter to Slavery

at 4 tim&jadien -the-monarchy- was reaching the height of its

centralized strength. To facilitate the flow of trade from the
islands and the mainland, the King encouraged merchants to
join in overseas ventures. From the very beginning, the kings
had claimed the exclusive right of commercial exploitation of
newly discovered lands. To a merchant who wished to trade
with Guinea or some other distant spot the crown would sell
a monopoly in a certain article produced there, or, in some
cases, grant to that merchant the exclusive right to deal with
a certain region. ’While the returns from this trade might be
large, the enterprise was expensive and the license itself costly,
so that the usual form of trading under a royal license was as a
company or an association of merchants with pooled capital.
Portuguese merchants, or associations of merchants, operating
under license of the crown, soon applied to overseas trade a
method of doing business that required the use of privately
owned factories. The first step was the securing of a grant or
monopoly from the crown which stated where they might trade
and the goods in which they might trade. The next step was
the equipping of one ship or a number of ships for the trade.
Then a factor was sent out to establish a factory in the appointed
place. This factor was not a royal official nor was his factory
a royal one. He was the agent of the merchants and the factory
was for the transaction of their business. That factory might
be the only one on a stretch of coast or it might be one of several
in a settlement dominated by a royal factory. Aside from the
distinction between private and royal ownership, there was no
. difference in operation between the factories. Each served as a
1 collecting station at which ships were laden for the return to
Portugal.
The operation of the business, subject to the discretionary
powers of the factor, was determined by the merchants in
Portugal. From what might be termed their head office, they
equipped ships, kept the factor supplied with orders and direc¬
tions, and, under the supervision of royal treasury officials, sold
off the cargoes that the factor sent home. This system, granted
the making of profits, possessed a certain desirable flexibility.
A merchant with a fund of capital at his disposal could take out
a royal license and trade profitably in a certain article from a
 Introduction 19

certain place. Finding himself at any time with an unengaged

ship he might use it in a side-traffic in some other licensed
article. It was not unusual for a merchant, having made a profit
in one monopoly, to engage in several others, nor was it out
of the way for one merchant to hold several monopolies at a
time. Fernao de Loronha, a celebrated Portuguese merchant
of the beginning of the sixteenth century, at one time held
licenses to trade with India and equipped several ships to sail
with the fleets to the East. At the same time, he held the dye-
wood monopoly for Brazil and sent several ships to exploit that
commodity. -
In the regulated and restricted field of trade under royal j
license, Portuguese merchants had really no great advantage,
for the crown was as willing to grant licenses to foreigners as
to its own merchants. The crown encouraged all merchants,
whether Portuguese or foreign, to enter the overseas trade and ,
to bring colonial goods to Portugal for sale, and offered them j
great advantages in the protection of their ships by royal fleets.
The Marchiones, a Florentine house, played a conspicuous part
as private traders with India under royal auspices.4
Even so brief an outline of the economic practices of the
Portuguese, when considered in relation to the condition of the
natives whom Cabral had found dancing on the beaches, sug¬
gests the differences between the two peoples and prepares the
approach to the principal interest of the present study—the
examination in detail of the economic relations of the Portu¬
guese and the natives in the settlement of Brazil.
Neglected as the economic aspect has been in the general
history of settlement in Brazil, it must not be supposed that
scholars have completely ignored it. Roberto Simonsen, for
instance, dealt with only economic history in his recent Historia
economica do Brasil.5 His work, while valuable in itself and in

* This discussion of Portuguese colonization and business is based on Fortunato

de Almeida, Historia de Portugal (4 vols., Coimbra, 1922), III, Instituiqoes
politicas e sociais de 1385 a 1580; Francisco Antonio Correa, Historia economica
de Portugal (2 vols., Lisbon, 1929-31); Joao Lucio de Azevedo, Epocas de
Portugal economico (Lisbon, 1929).
6 Roberto C. Simonsen, Historia economica do Brasil, 1500-1820 (2 vols., Sao
Paulo, 1938), especially Chapter III, "Aproveitamento economico das terras de
Santa Cruz.”
<o
20 From Barter to Slavery

stimulating in Brazil the writing of other works on the subject,

is too large in scope to bear on the particular point of interest
here. In covering from 1500 to the beginning of the nineteenth
century, he is forced to treat the great raw materials, such as
sugar and tobacco, whose production affected Brazilian life.
Concentrating on those wares that were important in export
trade, he is more interested in how Brazil affected a world
market than in the effect on Brazil of the production of such
wares, and, further, he considers mainly the period when Negro
slavery supplied much of the needed labor. Thus, while he
treats the economic in general, the cast of his book prevents
him from analyzing the relations of natives and Portuguese in
the period from 1500 to 1580.
The discussion of such relations in the much older Historia
geral do Brasil of Francisco Adolpho de Varnhagen,6 though
forming only one chapter of that capacious and admirable work,
in many ways remains the most penetrating and the most en¬
lightening. The essential thing in the living together of Portu¬
guese and natives, as Varnhagen saw it, was that the Portuguese
were few in number in a vast land that was new to them, so that
they made use of the barbaros. They learned from them not
nly what indigenous foods were edible but also the methods
f growing them, and they copied the native ways of fishing
and hunting. They adopted the native style in houses and boats,
and also the native methods of house- and boat-building. Most
important, the Portuguese, having with them at first no
European women, intermarried extensively with the natives and
acquiesced in many native customs. Precisely on the point of
economic relations, Varnhagen traces the steps by which the
Portuguese obtained from the natives what they needed. First,
(because they were feeble and few in number, they treated the
natives with great circumspection, and, indeed, with fear, for
they knew nothing of them and they did not feel strong enough
to withstand native hostility. They had with them many things
that the Indians coveted for their novelty and glitter, and these
they offered to induce the Indians to work for them. At first

* Francisco Adolpho de Varnhagen, Historia geral do Brasil (4th ed., 5 vols.,

Rio de Janeiro [1926-1936?]), I, 264-277, sec(ao XIII, "Vida dos primeiros
colonos e suas relagoes com os indios.”
 Introduction

they felt no shame at working side by side with the friendly

Indians in the necessary work of clearing the land and planting
the settlements. The second step was that of enslavement, when,
for one reason or another/.the~Beads^ and trinkets lost their
attraction for the Indians.. The Portuguese first acquired slaves,
captives made in native wars, from their Indian allies ancfe
friends. Then as they felt stronger, they waged war by them¬
selves and enslaved their captives. Varnhagen wastes no sym¬
pathy on the Indians thus enslaved. They were a people inferior
to the Portuguese, both in their state of civilization and, appar-
ently, in their capacity to develop. When the Portuguese first
landed, they had to proceed with caution for fear of inadver¬
tently precipitating an Indian attack. As they lived in the land,
they began to understand the improvidence, the treachery, and
the inconstancy of the Indians, and, comparing these qualities
with their own, became impatient and intolerant of such bar¬
barism. At the same time, the Indians, learning more about the
Portuguese, began to despise them for thei^ caution and pru- '
dence, for to the Indiansjanwillingness_to kill/'another man was
the greatest proof of cowardice and cowardice was the greatest
shame. With this want of understanding, the least dispute in
time became enough to set off a series of disorders, and, in
turn, a war. Consequently, in this struggle between two different /
civilizations, experience taught the Portuguese how to deal with
the Indians. To make them good neighbors and to raise them j
from their barbarism, constant tutelage and teaching were
needed, and these could be exercised only after the Indians
had been tamed. Then they could be prepared to adopt Chris¬
tianity and civilized habits and, as Varnhagen put it, becoming 1
morally better, they could enjoy tranquility of mind and per-
sonal security in the shade of protecting laws.7 /

7 At the close of the chapter, Varnhagen examines the question of the attitude
of Christian indiophiles toward enslavement by Europeans. Their philanthropy,
he says, taking the case of Las Casas, was well-intentioned but not soundly
founded. The Indians were not, he says, a superior, gentle, or estimable people
attacked by European scoundrels, as Las Casas presents the case. They were,
quite to the contrary, bestial in mind and body and in all ways inferior to the
Europeans. The Europeans, indeed, had the duty of civilizing them, a task that
could be accomplished only after the vigorous and vicious resistance of the Indians
had first been crushed. In connection with Varnhagen’s statement on this ques-
 rA
22 From Barter to Slavery

Varnhagen’s concept of economic relations emerges quite

clearly from his broad, general discussion when he describes
ways of obtaining labor as well as wares. He clearly perceived
a species of barter when he referred to the primeiros contrac-
tos e escambos com os europeos that took place during the first
days of settlement. The importance of the point that he made
has not always been recognized, perhaps because he did no more
than mention it, and has been ignored by even so practiced a
scholar of colonial Brazil as Capistrano de Abreu.8 Varnhagen
perceived, too, that such barter was a rather casual and increas¬
ingly unsatisfactory method of obtaining labor. Enslavement,
therefore, took its place, closely connected with the outbreak of
native wars and, in turn, with the growth of alliances with some
native tribes.
Two criticisms may be made of Varnhagen’s treatment. The
first concerns barter. Having observed the existence of barter,
he did no more with it and did not examine the evidence for
its later use. His neglect of the point is readily understandable,
for his Historia is mainly a study of political events, in which
economic matters play a subordinate part. Likewise, he implied
that barter was limited to the first few years of the life of any
given settlement, and he left the impression that it was shortly
and completely superseded as an unsatisfactory economic rela¬
tion between the Portuguese and the Indians. The second
concerns enslavement as a means of obtaining labor. Interested
in the political effects of wars, he did. not consider fully the
connection or absence of connection between the native wars
and the demands for labor by the Portuguese. Here again, as
in the case of barter, he was preoccupied with other interpreta¬
tions of history and also with the subordination of detail in
the large scale and scope of his Historia.
The present study examines the evidence of economic rela¬

tion, the reader is reminded of the struggles among the Spaniards in the Antilles
over the matter of the goodness or badness of the natives there. For a treatment
of the case in the Antilles, see Lewis Hanke, The First Social Experiments in the
Americas (Cambridge, 1935), a study of, inter alia, the Jeronymite Interrogatory,
in which the author sets up two categories of Indians: the "noble savage” and
the " dirty dog.”
8 Joao Capistrano de Abreu, Capitulos de historia colonial, 1300-1800 (3d ed.,
Rio de Janeiro, 1934), Chapters I-VI.
 Introduction 23
tions for the later part of the sixteenth century as well as that
for the opening years of the Portuguese settlements, for through
the century run the two themes of barter and slavery. Barter
will receive particular attention, as well as the conditions under
which it was used and the conditions under which its use was
abandoned. Barter, as the term is generally used, means only
the exchange of goods for goods. In this study, as has already
been suggested by the references to Varnhagen, the term is
expanded to mean the giving of goods by the Portuguese to
obtain from the natives not only goods but also labor.
This study will be limited to the first eighty years after the
discovery of Brazil and will be divided into three rough periods
before 1580, with only slight reference to the two decades after
1580.

royal licenses to ship brazilwood. They were often harassed

and their commerce endangered by the constant attacks of
armed French traders, who considered vast and unpeopled
Brazil fair game despite the King of Portugal’s claim to monop¬
olize the land. The attacks came so often and were so little
restrained by the French king that the Portuguese, though their
coastguard was in some instances successful in sinking French
ships, were close to losing the land to them.
/The second period' runs from about 1533 to 1549, when
donatarios (proprietary landlords) with royal grants of lands
and powers were attempting to settle colonies from which to
export agricultural surpluses. The attempt at agriculture im¬
plying more complicated economic relations with the natives
than had been needed by the relatively simple exploitation of
brazilwood, separates this period from the one before, though
the brazilwood trade continued in the hands of the original
traders and of the donatarios as well. Together with the in¬
crease in the economic occupations of the Portuguese went
further attacks by the French and by hostile natives. Despite

8 A single exception, the crew of a ship of the India fleet, occurred in 1519.
See below, p. 44.
24 From Barter to Slavery

the larger number of Portuguese in the land, not all the dona-
tarios were able to beat them off and the Portuguese domination
of Brazil became increasingly insecure.
1 The third periodjbegins in 1549 and, for the purposes of this
study, ends about 1580. In 1549, the King, presented again
with the choice of peopling Brazil or of losingk to the Frenc
and the hostile natives, sent out a.royal governo/to defend the
colonies. The political character of the governor, the eventual
pacification of the land after the defeat of the French, the con¬
sequent comparatively large Portuguese emigration to Brazil,
and the corresponding spread of the Portuguese settlements
along the coast and a little into the interior all mark off this
period from that of the donatarios. What the two periods have
//in common is the continuation of export agriculture as the pre¬
wailing basis for the economy of the settlements, always to the
accompaniment of the brazilwood trade.
The limitation in time of this study has a counterpart in the
restriction that is here placed on certain geographical terms.
The name Brazil as applied today has connotations that are
false for the sixteenth century, for Brazil then was only a little
larger than the land that Cabral had coasted. Cabral in finding
the land had thought it to be a large island or a continent, but
he had no notion of the enormous reaches of the modern
political area of Brazil. Indeed, the Portuguese who came after
him knew only a little of the breadth of over two thousand
miles from the Atlantic to the eastern slope of the Andes and
of the vast stretches from the Guianas to the Paraguay basin.
In the sixteenth century, they knew the coast well, for Portu¬
guese sailors had ranged up and down it, exploring but not
settling, and bringing back news of harbors and sandbanks and
other aids or perils to navigation. The interior for decades
afterwards remained something unknown to them, a region
breeding legend, literally a blank spot on their maps. In time
they learned something of it, as occasional explorers, hunting
treasure, plotted faint tracks across the mar jiorestal, but even
the hope of treasure did not induce them to found settlements
far away from the commodious highway of the sea. Thus, as
far as settlement is concerned, the name Brazil in its broadest
sense may be applied in the sixteenth century only to the stretch
 Introduction 25
of coast between the present-day states of Pernambuco and
Sao Paulo.
In the whole stretch of coast thus limited, two regions, a
northern and a southern one, may be distinguished. The north¬
ern one lies roughly between lat. 6° and 18° S., that is (to use
modern place names), between the states of Parahyba and
Espirito Santo. The southern one lies between lat. 18° and
25° S., extending from Espirito Santo to the state of Sao
Paulo. The difference between the two regions is in their
relation to the great central plateau that is so striking a feature
of the physiography of the interior of Brazil. In the northern
region, the eastern edge of the plateau is in lat. 6° roughly a
hundred miles or more inland, separated from the sea by a
coastal plain. South of lat. 6° the edge of the plateau begins
to approach the sea, which it reaches in the present Espirito
Santo. In the southern region, the edge of the plateau rises in
many places directly from the sea itself. Only occasionally
does it have any considerable amount of level land at its foot.
The coastal plain of the northern region is roughly triangular
in shape, broad at the north and narrowing gradually to the
south. No obstacles prevent movement north or south in it,
and movement across it is blocked only by the edge of the
plateau, which rises as a barrier in the west. The plain itself
is a fertile place, once covered with forests and thick vegetation
which flourished in its rich soil. Fresh winds from the sea
mitigate the tropical heat and bring abundant rains. One great
river, the Sao Francisco, which reaches the sea in the northern
region, rises in the interior of the plateau and falls over the
scarp to traverse the plain. For explorers and settlers it offered
a road to the interior once they had passed the obstacle of the
cataracts at the edge of the plateau. But the Sao Francisco is
an exception. The rivers of the plain are not, as a rule, large or
turbulent, nor do they originate on the plateau. They give easy
transportation by water across the plain up to the scarp itself.
Where they enter the sea they form inlets and harbors in the
long line of the coast, though they also build up sand-banks
and shoals that sometimes make dangerous the use of such
shelters.10
10 These remarks are based on the description of Brazil in Pierre Denis,
26 From Barter to Slavery

As might be expected, so long a stretch of coast shows great

variations in scenery. In the southern region, and especially
around Rio de Janeiro and Cape Frio, coastal ranges in all their
magnificence parade down to the sea. The hills and mountains,
of varying heights and forms, of a reddish but mainly neutral
color appear gloomy and forbidding when seen from some
miles at sea. From closer at hand, the heavy appearance is
relieved by the sight of masses of greenery at the bases of the
mountains and on every tenable slope. Small trees, creeping
plants, and bushes form a green mantle over all but the most
precipitate and broken faces of the mountains. In Espirito
Santo, where the edge of the plateau begins to retreat from the
sea, the coastal plain commences to take form. As the plain
widens toward the north, less and less of the edge of the plateau
may be seen from the sea. At some points a great peak or two
may be sighted from far off, but even these soon are lost to
view. At first, along the shore itself even in Espirito Santo,
squat hills lie behind the beach, but become interspersed with
low cliffs of red earth, and finally disappear. From then on,
the bluffs alternate with broad white beaches, which, with
rolling dunes, are from Bahia northward all that meets the eye..
The contrast between the northern and southern regions is
more than one of appearance. In the south, settlers seeking
lands had to go almost at once from the shore to the heights of
the edge of the plateau. There they found rivers that, though

Amerique du sud, in P. Vidal de la Blache and L. Gallois, Geographic universelle

(14 vols., Paris, 1927), Tome XV, Vol. I, 1st part, pp. 1-80; 2d part, pp. 39-204.
11 This paragraph is based on a description of the Brazilian coast by Dr. Goeldi,
director of the Museu Paraense, in Capistrano de Abreu, O descobnmento do
Brasil (Rio de Janeiro, 1929), PP- 274-275. I have compared his description with
comments on the appearance of the coast in Gabriel Soares de Sousa Tratado
descriptivo do Brasil em 1587 ... (3d ed„ Sao Paulo, 1938; referred to hereafter
as Soares, Tratado), pp. 19-123 passim-, and in U. S. Hydrographic Office, South
America Pilot, H. O. No. 172 (3d ed., Washington, 1927). Goeldi s comments
convey an impression of the appearance of the coast: [near Rio de Janeiro]
.Devido a sua cor roxeada, tinta neutra, estes mammillos graniticos a distancia
de algumas milhas assumem certo ar sombrio, grave, quasi oppressor por assim
dizer; o navegante, ao passar, por exemplo, pelo Cabo Frio, nao oonseguira facil-
mente libertar-se desta impressao . . . [near Bahia]. . . . Monotona, melancolica
6 a impressao causada por esta paizagem, campo de batalha, onde contra o
despotico regimen eolico trava uma pobre e opprimida vegetaqao herbacea e
arbustiva bem desigual combate de existencia.
 Introduction 27

rising within fifty miles of the Atlantic, flowed westward toward

the Parana and reached the ocean only after a long circuit in
the interior of the continent. Before them lay the whole of
the Brazilian plateau, rolling away into the blue distance and
offering no obstacle to their moving away from the sea. Their
penetration of the interior was, in the seventeenth century, to
give a greater extension to the name Brazil. In the north, where
the plain lay between two natural boundaries, the sea and the
plateau, expansion of settlement was limited. Within the limits,
however, communication was easy through the length and
breadth of the fertile, well-watered plain. In the sixteenth
century, the coastal plain was the most important part of Brazil.
 Chapter II

BRAZILWOOD TRADERS AND COASTGUARDS

The brazilwood traders, whose occupation brought them

immediately into economic relation with the natives, were the
first Portuguese to occupy points in the northern or southern
regions of the Brazilian coast after the explorers had passed by.
They went, as agents of contractors licensed by the crown, to
find in Brazil the source of a dyewood like that which had
for so long been used as a dyestuff in European textile produc¬
tion. Though they were few in number in proportion to the
size of the country, neither the importance of their trade nor
their effect on the natives should be underestimated. The value
of the cargoes justified them and their unwelcome competitors,
the French, in coming frequently, and the distribution of the
trees led them to deal with native tribes at widely separated
points of the coast. Their method of collecting wood differed
in some important respects from that used by the French, but
both methods used barter as the essential in obtaining labor
and wares.
With the Portuguese, the brazilwood trade, starting early in
the sixteenth century, not only gave a name to the land of
Brazil but remained prominent in foreign commerce until well
beyond the middle of the nineteenth century. Indeed, so vigor¬
ously was the trade carried on that in the sixteenth century
itself many of the forests had been damaged and some regions
already stripped of their trees. In its earliest stages, before the
production of such cultivated crops as sugar and cotton, it
was almost all that Brazil could offer. Simonsen appreciated
the fact that it stood almost alone and recognized its value in
European commerce when he was seeking ways of charac¬
terizing the various periods of Brazilian economic history. To
him, the first three decades of the sixteenth century formed the
first Brazilian economic cycle.1
In point of time, the first load of brazilwood may have been
carried to Portugal from Brazil in 1500 in the ship that Cabral

1 Simonsen, Historia economica do Brasil, I, 81.

28
 Brazilwood Traders and Coastguards 29

sent back to announce his discovery, though this was, properly

speaking, only a sample lot and not a commercial cargo.2
Actual commercial exploitation of the wood began shortly
thereafter. To exploit the land, the King in 1502 let a con¬
tract to Fernao de Loronha and a company of merchants to
trade in brazilwood and slaves. They were to send six ships a
year and to discover three hundred leagues of coast a year,
besides building and maintaining a fort for three years. In
return, they were to pay nothing the first year, one-sixth the
second and one-quarter the third.3 If the company actually
traded under its contract, it would have been bringing back
between 1501 and 1505 4 about thirty thousand logs or seven
hundred and fifty tons of wood a year.5 A load did reach
Lisbon in 1504. Gongalo Coelho, sent by the King with six
ships to explore the coast, lost four, but brought back in the
remaining two not only wood but parrots and native finery as
well.6 In 1506 Loronha had another contract for brazilwood,
this time paying four thousand ducats a year to bring back
twenty thousand quintals,7 and in 1509 and 1510 French and
German merchants also took contracts.8 Though it cannot be
said whether these men brought any wood, some was probably
coming from Bahia in 1510.9 In 1511 five thousand logs came
from Cape Frio.16 Some may have been coming from the
vicinity of Rio de Janeiro before 1510.11 In 1520, there seems
to have been an establishment, possibly concerned with brazil¬
wood, in Pernambuco.12 The captain of a royal coastguard,
3 Damiao de Goes, Chronica do felicissimo rei D. Manuel (4 vols., Coimbra,
1926), I, 118.
3 Letter of Pietro Rondinelli, Seville, October 3, 1502, HCP, II, 255.
‘Antonio Baiao, "O comercio do pao brasil,” HCP, II, 324-330.
8 This calculation is based on the account of the ship " Bertoa,” below,
note 42. The cargo of the " Bertoa ’’ was 5,000 logs or about 125 tons.
8 Damiao de Goes, I, 120.
7 Baiao, in HCP, II, 326. Twenty thousand quintals is about 1,200 tons,
which, again using the “ Bertoa ” as a standard, would require between nine
and ten ships for transport.
8 Baiao, in HCP, II, 325.
9 See below, p. 35, for mention of Joham de Braga, a factor found in Bahia
the following year.
10 See below, pp. 34-38, for the account of the ship " Bertoa.”
11 Capistrano de Abreu, Capitulos de historia colonial, pp. 31-32.
13 The reference is to the account of Parmentier, in Giovanni Ramusio, Delle
navigationi et viaggi (3 vols., Venice, 1550-1568), III, 423-432, especially p.
30 From Barter to Slavery

Christovao Jacques, was given the right to trade and probably

was sending back a load in 1522.13 In 1526, 1527, and 1531
loads were coming back from Pernambuco.14 Though specific
references to the years in which brazilwood was traded are
scattered, the way in which the Portuguese traded suggests
that wood was collected between the years mentioned. The
system of factories that they used to collect the wood, as will
be seen (e. g., the case of the factory of the ship " Bertoa ”),
implies the existence of rather permanent establishments, trad¬
ing places to be used several times rather than once and then
abandoned.15
As can be seen from a recital of the times of their going,
the Portuguese traders centered around Cape Frio in the south
and around Bahia and Pernambuco in the north. In addition,
they knew of many other parts of the coast that had good
brazilwood.16 Such knowledge does not necessarily imply that
wood was cut there, but it does show the interest of the traders
in more localities than the ones specifically named.
Like the Portuguese, the French went often to many points
of the coast.17 When they first reached Brazil to collect brazil¬
wood is not clear, but they are expressly mentioned as having
been in Bahia in 1526,18 and at Pernambuco in 1531.19 Cape

426, in which he speaks of a wooden fort with a few Portuguese. Of this

establishment Oliveira Lima says that " sem rigor se pode tratar de feitoria.”
Manuel de Oliveira Lima, " A Nova Lusitania,” HCP, III, 288.
13 For Christovao Jacques, see below, p. 43, note 69.
14 C. R. Beazley, John and Sebastian Cabot (New York, 1898), p. 153;
letter of D. Rodrigo de Acuna to Bishop of Osma, June 15, 1527, in Josi
Ramos-Coelho, ed., Alguns documentos do archivo nacional da Torre do Tombo
(Lisbon, 1892), p. 489; same to King of Portugal, April 30, 1528, HCP, III,
89-90; Diogo Leite to King of Portugal, April 30, 1528, HCP, III, 89; "Pro¬
testation de Bertrand d'Ormessan, Baron de Saint-Blancard,” in Guenin, Ango
et ses pilotes, pp. 43-47.
15 Cf. Simonsen, I, 89, who makes a point of the accumulation of stocks
around a factory; and the "Bertoa” account, below.
19 Cf., for example, Soares, Tratado, pp. 42 (Rio do Cotigipe), 43 (Rio Real).
17 An old, and in many ways unsatisfactory, history of the French in Brazil
is that of Paul Gaffarel, Histoire dtt Bresil fran^ais au seizieme siecle (Paris,
1878).
18 In that year, French ships were destroyed by Christovao Jacques. See
below, pp. 43-44.
19 Eugenio de Castro, ed., Diario da navegaqao de Pero Lopes de Sousa
 Brazilwood Traders and Coastguards 31
Frio attracted them just as it did the Portuguese and they made
it a usual resort until well toward the end of the century.20 They
even gave their name to shelters on the coast. Near the mouth
of the Sao Francisco was Porto velho dos franceses,21 and four¬
teen leagues away, Porto novo dos franceses.22 In addition to
entering these stopping places they often went up the mouths
of the rivers of the coastal plain looking for brazilwood.23
Landing in Brazil for the purpose of collecting brazilwood,
the Portuguese and French both turned at once to the natives
for help. Two reasons for their doing so are apparent. The
first is based on the sort of tree that they were seeking, for
brazilwood, in addition to being hard, is also heavy.24 The
second is that in the whole of Brazil at that time there was no
animal fit for drawing or bearing burdens. Birds, small quad¬
rupeds, and cats all abounded then as now, but of these only

(1530-1532) (5th ed, 2 vols, Rio de Janeiro, 1927), I, 104-107. (Hereafter

referred to as Sousa, Navegagao.)
20 It was to Cape Frio, always a center for the French, that some of the
Huguenots who had come with Villegaignon retired after being expelled from
Rio de Janeiro. Much general information about them and about their part
in the Tamoyo war of 1564 may be found in Cartas, informagoes, fragmentos his-
toricos e sermoes de Padre Joseph de Anchieta, S. J. (1554-1594), ed. Afranio
Peixoto (" Publicagoes da Academia Brasileira: Cartas Jesuiticas III,” Rio de
Janeiro, 1933; hereafter referred to as Anchieta), pp. 245-256; Soares, Tratado,
pp. 98-99.
21 Soares, Tratado, p. 32.
22 Ibid. The arrecifes de D. Rodrigo, today anglice as Dom Rodrigo Rocks,
were also called Porto dos franceses, for the same reasons. (Ibid.; South
America Pilot, p. 261.) Judging by the Pilot, p. 260, the old Porto velho dos
franceses is now known simply as Porto francez.
23 See, for example, Soares, Tratado, pp. 16-17, 18, 40, etc.
24 For description of the wood and the trees, cf. Jose Bernadino de Souza,
O pau-brasil na historia nacional (Sao Paulo, 1939), who, together with
physical descriptions, cites the history of brazilwood, the legends and myths
connected with it, and, in short, almost all that is known on the subject. Two
of the oldest and most complete descriptions are those by Jean de Lery, Histoire
d’vn voyage fait en la terre dv Bresil, avtrement dite Amerique (La Rochelle,
1578), pp. 194-195; and Andre Thevet, Les singvlaritez de la France antarctiqve,
avtrement dite Amerique (Paris, 1557). Brazilwood belongs to the family
Caesalpinia. One variety, and the one most known in mediaeval trade, is native
to the warmer regions of Asia. Another variety, Cues, echinata, the so-called
peachwood, is distributed over Central America and the northern parts of South
America. What is today considered the true brazilwood, Caes. brasiliensis,
comes exclusively from Brazil itself. Of all the woods the one richest in color-
32 From Barter to Slavery

some were fit for food and many were of no use at all to
humans.25 Thus, the bearing of burdens had to be done by men.
All that is known about the natives of Brazil justifies what
Cabral’s scribe wrote after seeing them dancing on the beaches.
A primitive folk who knew the use of fire but not of metal,
their style of life offered the greatest contrast to that developed
by the Incas in Peru or the Mayas in Mexico and Yucatan.
Many tribes among them had a simple agriculture which they
supplemented with hunting and fishing, but some, without
farming, lived as they could with their arrows and nets alone.
Even with their rudimentary farming, no tribe was entirely
settled in a given locality. Those who only hunted for food
wandered freely and constantly, while those who cultivated
rude fields in the woods moved about more slowly after a
harvest or a series of harvests. Near their clearings, the more
ing matter is that called Pernambuco wood, Caes. crista, even today abundant in
Brazil and in Jamaica.
The trees grow in thick clumps or small forests, sometimes scattered through
a stand of varied timber. In height and general appearance the grey-barked
trees with their greyish-green leaves somewhat resemble the oak found in tem¬
perate Europe. The hard wood of the trunk and large branches appear white
or light yellow when first cut, but on exposure to the air turn deep red. The
wood is hard, so hard, indeed, that cutting it even with metal tools is laborious
and slow.
As a dyewood, the trees of the Caesalpinia are valuable as a source of a
substance today called brasilin. To make dyes, the logs are rasped to a coarse
powder, which is then sprinkled with water and left to ferment for some weeks.
The dye thus obtained is used to produce in cloth, for instance, colors ranging
from almost a maroon to a light brown-pink. By diluting the quantity in the
dye-bath a variety of pinks may be obtained, and, by the addition of other
substances, certain browns and purples. The objections to the use of this dye,
which is a usual dyestuff for ordinary cloths, come from the difficulty in pro¬
ducing exact shades. The dye varies in strength and hue depending on the
variety of wood used, the age of the wood, the effect of fermentation, and
other factors. Then, too, the color is in time fugitive. W. S. Stansfield,
" Half a Century in the Dyeing and Finishing of Worsted, Woolen, and Linen
Piece-Goods,” Journal of the Society of Dyers and Colorists, Jubilee issue, 1884-
1934 (Bradford, Yorkshire, 1934), pp. 139-169; A. G. Perkin, A. E. Everest,
The Natural Organic Coloring Matters (London, 1918), pp. 345-362. I have
found no evidence that the dyestuff was ever prepared in Brazil for export,
despite the fact that more prepared dyestuff could be loaded on a ship than
the brazilwood logs. This may be because the process of preparing the dye¬
stuff was too complicated for the limited resources of the traders in Brazil, or
because the dye would lose in strength, once prepared, during the passage to
Portugal.
26 The importance of the lack of draft animals is pointed out by Capistrano
de Abreu, Capitulos de historia colonial, p. 11.
 Brazilwood Traders and Coastguards 33

settled tribes built stockaded villages of a few large sleeping-

huts made of stakes, woven grass, and thatch.26 These people,
to whom metal tools were unknown, were now to help in
bringing down the trees and dividing them up, and, especially,
in transporting the wood to the ships.
The natives in many parts of the coast soon became familiar
with what the Europeans wanted in Brazil, regardless of their
being French or Portuguese. To the Indians, in the beginning,
it was immaterial that the Portuguese and French were enemies
who were disputing both the brazilwood trade and the posses¬
sion of Brazil itself. Indian alliances came later, when the
natives had had an opportunity to distinguish between the
black-haired Portuguese and the blond Norman French. At
first, it was enough for them to learn that the Europeans wanted
brazilwood and that they used a certain method for getting it.
How far Indians of various parts of the coast had become
familiar with the wants of Europeans is strikingly shown by a
remark made in passing by Pero Lopes de Sousa. He reported
that as he was sailing along the coast in 1531, some Indians
came swimming out to his ship to ask if he wished some
brazilwood.27
Knowledge of what were the trading practices of the Euro¬
peans in Brazil is limited by the small amount of source ma¬
terial on the subject. A general picture of the European market
for brazilwood may be built up from a variety of sources con¬
cerning Europe itself, the East, and Brazil as well. A de¬
scription of the actual collecting of the wood in Brazil in the
sixteenth century, on the contrary, rests principally on one
detailed account of the Portuguese trading-ship " Bertoa ” 28
26 The natives are described more fully below, pp. 63-66.
27 Sousa, Navegagdo, I, 116-117. This occurrence took place on February
3, 1531, off Bahia da Traigao, between Pernambuco and Bahia. It is interesting
to compare such skill in swimming with that of a tribe in Uruguay whom the
Portuguese met. " ... e vinham apoz de nos, hus a nado e outros em almadias,
que nadam mais que golfinhos; e da mesma maneira nos com vento a popa
muito fresco:—nadavam tanto quanto nos andavamos.” {Ibid., pp. 305-306.)
Considering the speed of even a slow ship, this is indeed swimming like
dolphins.
28 Llyuro da naoo Bertoa que vay para a terra do Brazyll. . . . This most
interesting document was discovered by Varnhagen and printed by him in the
first edition of his Historia geral. For other editions, see the note by Rodolpho
Garcia in the third edition of the Historia geral, I, 102, n. 22. I have used
the text printed in HCP, II, 343-347 (hereafter referred to as Bertoa).
34 From Barter to Slavery

and on two French accounts describing French trading in the

1560’s.29 Scattered additional references to brazilwood itselr
and to the visits of brazilwood traders make up the budget of
available information.30
The history of the ship " Bertoa,” a vessel prepared by
Fernao de Loronha and a group of merchants,31 illustrates Portu¬
guese practice in 1511. She was a commercial ship sent to
Brazil to load brazilwood.32 The officers were a captain, a
sailing-master, a pilot, a purser, and a scribe. The crew33 con¬
sisted of thirteen able seamen, fourteen grumetes, and four
pages.
The captain was instructed to make as expeditious a passage
as possible.34 On February 22, 1511, the " Bertoa ” sailed from
Lisbon for Cape Frio. On April 15, she reached the Sao Fran¬
cisco river in Brazil and two days later entered Bahia. After a
stop of twenty-seven days she left on May 12 for Cape Frio,
where she arrived on the twenty-sixth.35 She loaded five thou¬
sand logs of brazilwood and took on thirty-five slaves and a
number of native animals.36 She sailed on July 27 and reached
Lisbon about the end of October.37
29 Lery, Histoire d’vn voyage . . . ; Thevet, Les singvlaritez. . . .
80 Cf. Soares, Tratado\ Hans Staden, IVarhafftige Historia . . . (Frankfort,
1557), as examples.
31 See above, pp. 19, 29. ” Bertoa, p. 344.
33 Ibid. Sailors were marinheiros, a term today translated as able seamen, or
" A. B.” Grumete meant what would be called today ordinary seaman or ship’s
boy. The term, which was the same in Spanish, has no modern English trans¬
lation. Professor Morison, for instance, uses the obsolete English gromet, which,
with grummet, may be familiar to readers of Purchas or Hakluyt. Pagem, a
page, was a young boy making his first voyage, after which he would be pro¬
moted to grumete. The distinction between the terms in sixteenth-century
Portuguese practice may be seen in the ordinances concerning seamen in the
Ordenagoes manuelinas: O primeiro [- quinto~\ liuro das ordenagoens. Com
priuilegio real Da sua alteza (2 vols. [Lisbon], 1521-1533), V, cxii, 16.
Marinheiros were a separate class because they steered and handled sail.
Grumetes did the other work of the ship. Pagens were cabin-boys, servants of
the officers. The marinheiros were the most highly-paid of the three classes.
For an extended treatment of nautical terminology concerning these classes of
sailors, see Samuel Eliot Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea (2 vols., New
York, 1942), I, 185-192, 225-226, 231-232, II, 321-322.
34 Bertoa, p. 345.
36 Ibid., p. 343. The outward passage was by way of the Canaries, which
were passed March 2.
36 Ibid., pp. 345, 346, 347.
37 Ibid., p. 344. Cape Espichel at the mouth of the Tagus was sighted
 Brazilwood Traders and Coastguards 35

Such is the general narrative of the voyage. The detail of

the behavior of the officers and crew is more illuminating. On
May 5, while the ship was in Bahia, the scribe discovered a
theft on board of some knives and edged tools. The captain
directed him and a factor, Joham de Braga, to investigate.38
Joham de Braga’s name does not appear on the list of officers
and crew that sailed from Lisbon. He is first mentioned as a
factor in the investigation of the theft, and it later appears
that he went with the ship to Cape Frio,39 where so far as can
be told, he remained. From the appearance of Braga, it may be
inferred that a factory of which he was factor did exist in
Bahia. Such an inference explains where Braga came from,
and, suggests that the " Bertoa,” though under orders not to
stop en route, went to Bahia to pick him up. It does not
explain why Braga left his supposed factory.
The factory at Cape Frio was on an island.40 In charge of it
was a factor, who was there when the "Bertoa” came in 41
and who is not to be confused with Joham de Braga. On
Thursday, June 12, seventeen days after arrival, the loading of
wood began under the supervision of the factor of the factory42
and of the scribe of the ship. By Saturday, 943 logs were
aboard. Nothing was loaded on Sunday. Monday, the load¬
ing continued, and by Saturday, the twenty-first, 2,249 were on.
On that Saturday 490 logs were put on in one day. Sunday
was again a day of idleness, but on Monday, the twenty-third,
340 logs were accounted for. Tuesday, the twenty-fourth, was
St. John’s day and not a day of work, but from the twenty-fifth
to the twenty-seventh (Wednesday to Friday) 1,160 logs went
on board. On Wednesday, perhaps to make up for the pre¬
ceding feast-day, 504 logs were counted in, the largest day’s
count. After the twenty-seventh, there was a long rest to July
10, when only 140 logs were loaded, and then another rest

October 20, and, two days later, the carreyra de sam gyan ("carreira de Sao
Joao ”) was entered.
38 Ibid., p. 346. Braga had a scribe to help him, Jeronymo, but whether he
had other Portuguese with him does not appear.
39 Ibid., p. 347 . 40 Ibid., p. 345.
41 " . . . que emboora chegardes ao cabo frio omde estiver ho feitor lhe
emtregares todas as mercaderias que llevardes. ...” Ibid.
42 There is no specific reference to his supervising the work, but, judging by
the powers given him, it seems certain that he did.
36 From Barter to Slavery

until the twenty-fourth, when 176 logs completed the tally.

The total was then 5,008 logs.43
The distribution of working days is of interest. There was a
long period (seventeen days) between arrival and the first
loading. That might be explained by the necessity of getting
the ship ready for the cargo. Then there was a period (sixteen
days, with three holy-days excluded when no loading went on)
during which the bulk of the cargo went on board (4,592 out
of 5,008 logs). On two days out of the month left before
sailing (June 27 to July 29) the rest of the cargo was got in,
and then not on consecutive days. With this distribution in
time in mind, two questions may be examined: the cutting of
the brazilwood and the loading of the ship.
The crew of the " Bertoa,” the only possible laborers men¬
tioned by the scribe of the ship, was made up of thirty men.

iS Ibid., pp. 345-346. The complete record was as follows:

Date Humber of Logs
June 12 317
13 328
14 298
16 363
17 306
18 339
19 293
20 458
21 490
23 340
25 504
26 347
27 309
July 10 140
24 176
Using all available figures for the weights and measures of brazilwood, it is
possible to say that each log weighed about 50 pounds, or 0.4166 quintal. The
5,000 logs of the " Bertoa,” therefore, made a cargo of 125 tons or 2,082.5
quintals. The quintal is a measure of approximately 120 pounds. The average
of logs loaded daily is 333.86 or just over 8 tons. It is impossible to calculate
the number of logs to be made from one tree. Lery says that some trees are
found so big. that three men are not able to embrace the single trunk. (His¬
tone, p. 194 ) He adds: ” Et parce aussi qu'il y a des personnages pardega,
qui pensent que les buches rondes, qu’on voit ordinairement chez les marchans,
soit la grosseur des arbres: pour mostrer que tels s'abusent outre que i’ay dit
qu'il s’en trouue de fort gros, i’ay encore adiouste que les sauuages, tant afin
qu’il leur soit plus aise a porter qu'aise a manier dans la navire, l’arrondissent
& accoustrent de ceste facon.” (Ibid., p. 196.)
 Brazilwood Traders and Coastguards 37

The able seamen, classed as such, were thirteen in number. Of

them, aside from their names and the names of the towns
from which they came, nothing is known except that seven
were married, five were not, and the condition of one is not
given.44 The fourteen grumetes were a mixed lot. One was
married and ten were not. One was a blacksmith. Two were
Negroes and two (one of whom was one of the Negroes) were
slaves of the owners of the vessel.45 The four pages were
servants of the officers and the scribe.46 Of these men, the
able seamen probably expected to work only as sailors.47 The
pages, likewise, would still have to attend to the wants of the
officers on land as on the high seas. Because of their com¬
paratively large number, a possible guess is that of the whole
crew the grumetes were to work with the logs.
Whether this interpretation of a division of labor among
the crew is valid or not, the question is whether anyone in the
crew cut the brazilwood. If they did, then they must have cut
enough wood in seventeen days to start loading at the rate of
about three hundred logs a day. But in the orders borne by
the officers were instructions for the officers to watch over the
men of the ship and to see that none of them ran away or
stayed behind when the ship sailed.48 Such an order is quite
understandable, for if enough of the crew ran away to go
native or otherwise seek their fortunes in the New World the
ship would be undermanned for the return passage. In addi¬
tion to this provision there is an order that no man of the ship
was to go on shore (" na terra firma ”) except on the island
where the factory was located.49 The crew, then, had access to
the island but not to the mainland, and, therefore, could have
had nothing to do with the cutting of the brazilwood. While it
cannot be said who among the crew did the work, it appears
that the crew was to load the ship.

44 Bertoa, p. 345.
46 Ibid. 46 Ibid.
47 Ibid. See above, note 33. The able seamen possibly may have done no work
at all while ashore. In the Sousa, Navegagao, I, 345, it was thought good for
some of the ships to depart because the able seamen used up their pay without
doing any service to the King and ate up the store of food.
48 Bertoa, p. 345.
49 Ibid.
38 From Barter to Slavery

With the crew thus limited in its work, the function of the
factor of Cape Frio requires examination. He took charge
when the ship came in.60 In conjunction with the scribe of the
” Bertoa,” he saw to the loading and counted in the logs. The
scribe of the ” Bertoa ” kept an account for the ship, and very
likely the factor kept another for the outgoing goods of the
factory.61
All the goods that the " Bertoa ” had brought were handed
over to the factory on arrival.62 Only the factor or persons
acting with his permission were allowed to trade with the
Indians.63 He received from the ship on arrival all the goods
that she had brought out. In this case that cargo was made
up in part of knives and edged tools that were to be traded
to the Indians.64 The presence of such hardware suggests that
it was to be given to the Indians to aid them in preparing
brazilwood. Consequently, and in view of the absence of any
other labor, it seems likely that the trade in these articles by the
factor had as its counterpart the supplying of brazilwood by the
natives.
The account of the " Bertoa ” describes how brazilwood was
collected in 1511. Some details of a Portuguese factory that
was operating in Pernambuco in 1529 corroborate the account.66

*° Apparently Joham de Braga acted as assistant to the factor of Cape Frio.

The " Bertoa ” arrived at the factory on May 26. On the twenty-ninth, Braga
came to the ship, apparently from the factory ashore, to withdraw the hard¬
ware of the cargo ("aos xxbiiij dias do mes de maio em quimta feira no cabo
frio veo Joham de Braga a naoo bertoa a tirar a ferrameta darmagam. . . .
Ibid., p. 347.
61 Again, there is no specific mention of his work of supervision. The
account of the scribe of the ship is, of course, the Llyuro da naoo Bertoa itself.
63 Ibid., p. 347. This is the ferrameta darmaqam mentioned in note 50, for
the receiving of which the factor had to give an acknowledgment to the captain.
Ibid., p. 345.
63 Ibid.
84 Ibid., p. 346. At the same time, no arms or weapons of any sort were to
be traded to the natives. Ibid., p. 347.
85 The history of this Pernambuco factory is largely derived from the account
of the capture of it by a French ship " La Pelerine.” The owners of the ship
protested to the Portuguese king, after ” La Pelerine ” had been captured by a
Portuguese patrol, and sought to recover the price of the ship and her cargo.
This protest is the " Protestation de Bertrand d’Ormessan, baron de Saint-
Blancard,” published in Latin and French in Guenin, pp. 43-47, 256-261; and
in Sousa, Navegafdo, II, 19-31. The ship, operated and prepared by a com-
 Brazilwood Traders and Coastguards 39

A factor and five other Portuguese were living on an island

where they had a group of buildings.66 In these were stored
several thousand quintals of brazilwood, a few hundred of
cotton and native grains, and small amounts of miscellany.67
Near the island on the mainland many Indians were gathered.68
The history of this Pernambuco factory agrees with that of the
Bertoa in showing that the goods were accumulated in store¬
houses under a factor, though it does not state on what terms
the goods had been accumulated. In 1546, however, the natives
of Pernambuco were busy at work collecting brazilwood for
Portuguese contractors, who paid them for their labor with
trinkets and tools.69 In all important particulars, this instance
of the year 1546 indicates the continuation to even that late

pany of armateurs, sailed from Marseilles in December of 1530 with 120 men
Some of her cargo was in goods for trading with the Indians, wares that
were sought after and that had a great price in Brazil, and in tools needed for
the construction of a fort and for the cultivation necessary to support its
garrison. She reached Pernambuco in February or March of 1531. In the
Portuguese factory there were six Portuguese, who with many Indian allies
resisted the landing of the French and finally made peace with them. Then
the French, with the aid of the Portuguese and the Indians, built a fort, for
which work the French commander spent about four thousand ducats. About
June, La Pelerine sailed for France, leaving about half of her crew in
Pernambuco. She bore the following cargo:

300 quintals of cotton at lOd per quintal

900 d worth of grains 3d per quintal
600 parrots, 3600d 6d each
3000 leopard skins, etc. 3d the skin
5000 quintals of brazilwood 8d per quintal
3000 d worth of minerai d’or
1000 d worth of huiles medicinales

Her owners valued the cargo at 62,300 ducats, all told. She fell in with a
Portuguese coastguard off the Portuguese coast when bound into the Mediter¬
ranean and, after a day’s travel with it, was captured by stratagem. Her factory
in Pernambuco continued until December 31, 1531, when Pero Lopes de Sousa
laid siege to it. After eighteen days’ bombardment, the French were defeated
and the Portuguese took possession.
"Sousa, Navegagdo, I, 131-132, refers to the buildings of the factory
destroyed in the fighting.
67 " Protestation,” in Sousa, Navegafao, II, 19-20.
68 The Indians were allies of the Portuguese and aided them against the
French attack. Ibid., II, 19.
58 Letter of Duarte Coelho to D. Joao III, Olinda, December 20, 1546, HCP,
III, 314.
40 From Barter to Slavery

date of the same method of collecting brazilwood that is to be

inferred from the account of the " Bertoa.”
In short, the available evidence on the Portuguese traders
shows that the Indians brought brazilwood to a factory, where
the factor exchanged articles for it and kept the wood until the
coming of a Portuguese ship.
The French who were loading brazilwood on the Brazilian
coast were faced with the same difficulty as were the Portu¬
guese in getting the cargoes to the ships. Their solution, how¬
ever, did not include the factory. Apparently, French ships
anchored on the coast while the crews went ashore to find the
Indians. Then the crew arranged with the Indians to bring a
load of wood in exchange for some articles. The ships stayed
on the coast until the loading was completed, though there is
no way of knowing the length of time of these waits. The only
possible equivalent among the French to the Portuguese resi¬
dent factor was the French interpreter who lived with the
Indians for several years together.60 It must be noticed that
he had nothing resembling the factory of the Portuguese.

00 J. Gomes de Carvalho, D. Joao III e os francezes, pp. 165-166. His

argument is as follows: 'Without the resources of the Portuguese, the French
were unable to establish factories. The place of the factor, accordingly, was
taken by the interpreter, who was usually a Norman, who did the factor’s work
with more economy and less risk. Besides acting as an interpreter, he collected
goods from the Indians to form a cargo. W hen the French ships came, the
cargo was ready at hand for loading. (Ibid., pp. 165-175.) Carvalho thus
sets up the French interpreter as being the same in function as the Portuguese
factor. He does not sufficiently stress the fact that the French, whatever their
resources, were as frequent visitors to the coast as the Portuguese. For
instance, almost every Portuguese account of a voyage to Brazil refers to a
French ship sighted. This is a very curious omission, because his whole book
is giv£n to an examination of the French threat to Portuguese control of
Brazil. Further, while he successfully establishes the existence and presence of
the French interpreters who lived for long periods in Brazil, he overemphasizes
the interpreters’ collecting of goods in the absence of the ships. The accounts
in Lery and Thevet, for instance, show that a good deal of the preparing of
the cargo, especially of brazilwood, was done while the ships were offshore.
It would appear that the French did not use factories, not because they had
insufficient resources, but because the fixed factory would be too liable to attack
by the Portuguese. In its place, they used their ships, which they anchored off
the coast while much of the cargo was being prepared. The interpreter, who
lived with the natives, certainly traded with the natives to secure the necessary
goods. Carvalho says: " [The interpreters] . . . transportavam para os portos
os toros de brasil, colhiam pimenta, de que as vezes faziam roga . . . e algodao,
 Brazilwood Traders and Coastguards 41

The French method just outlined is the one described in the

two French accounts by Thevet and Lery.61 Thevet, who pul>
hshed his account of life in Brazil in 1557, described the brazil¬
wood trees, and said that to gain some trinket or garment the
Indians themselves would cut the wood and carry it to the
ships, sometimes a distance of three or four leagues.62 Lery,
who was in Brazil at the same time as Thevet, published his
account in 1578. The wood, he said, was so hard that it was
difficult to cut. As there were no horses, asses, or other beasts
to carry or draw burdens, man must do that work. If it was
not for the help of the Indians, then, foreigners in the country
would not have been able to load even one ship a year. In
return for shirts, hats, knives, and other wares, and with metal
tools given them by the French, the Indians cut, sawed, split,
quartered, and rounded off the brazilwood. Then they shoul¬
dered the logs and carried them two or three leagues over
mountains and difficult ground to the very edge of the sea,
close to the vessels lying at anchor. There the sailors took
the burden and loaded the ships.63
The description of the French method is complete with Lery
and Thevet, but it may be decorated, if not always strictly
corroborated, by some charming pictorial details. The Reinel
map of 1504, an early French map of Brazil, shows the natives

preparavam pelles, pennas e todos os productos de escambo e ensinavam os

papagaios a falar francez, para se fazer com presteza o carregamento da proxima
embarcacao. . . . ’ {Ibid., p. 165.) With the exception of the transporting of
brazilwood, which I question, all these other things are connected as much
with the life of the interpreter in Brazil as with his preparing cargoes in the
absence of ships. The pepper and cotton, for instance, need not be got ready
until the ship was in sight. Further, judging from Thevet and Lery, the collec¬
tion of brazilwood and other goods was done by the Indians in exchange for
trinkets, so that Carvalho’s statement that the interpreter did thus and so should
read that he paid the Indians to do it. As the interpreter had no factory or
storehouse, it therefore appears that he would pay the Indians to collect
materials while the ships were on hand to take them without delay.
“ See above, note 24.
,a Thevet, Singvlaritez, fol. 116-117. Speaking of the difficulty of logging,
he adds: " ie vou laisse a quelle peine, & ce pour appetit de gaigner quelque
pauure accoustrement de meschante doublure, ou quelque chemise.” {Ibid.)
The natives also traded parrots, doves, and cotton, for hardware. {Ibid., fols.
85, 92.)
,3 Lery, Histoire, pp. 194-196. Cf. above, the point made by Capistrano de
Abreu, note 25 above.
42 From Barter to Slavery

chopping at trees and carrying logs.64 The pictorial map of

Brazil illustrating the account of Parmentier’s voyage in the
third volume of Ramusio gives much the same scene. In
Rouen, a city connected with the Brazil trade in the sixteenth
century, are certain carvings that show Brazilian natives at
work. Judging from the sculptures, the cutting down of trees
and the carrying about of logs seemed to meet entirely the
natives’ concept of the full life.66 Part of the celebration o
the entry of Henry II of France into Rouen in 1550 was the
representation of life in far-off Brazil, with real Tupinambas
to live in a simulated wood and carry on in make-believe the
habits of their lives. In the drawing made of the occasion,
every aspect of native life is shown in different sections of the
plate. Here a village shows the manner of constructing houses;
elsewhere a conflagration destroys other houses. Two distinct
battles against Tupiniquins are under way, but despite that
disturbance other natives stroll through groves or indulge in
the prevailing passion for carrying brazilwood from the woods
to the shore.67
Needless to say, the books of Thevet and Lery are also
illustrated. Lery’s has plates showing the life of the Tamoyos
that are simple, straightforward pictorial statements. Though
the Indians represented probably would not fit into any anthro¬
pologists’s measurements of the Tamoyos of the sixteenth cen¬
tury, details of ornament, of construction, and of vegetation
are carefully done, if somewhat conventionalized. The illus¬
trations in Thevet are much more exuberant. The artist used
much the same material of pose, details of decoration, and even
of incident as Lery’s had done, but, looking on the savages of
Brazil with the eye of a proto-Rubens, he planted Brazil with
forests of European trees and peopled it with demi-gods whose
incredible muscles were in the best Italianate taste. The pic-

84 Reproduced in J. Denuce, Les origines de la cartography portugaise

(Gand, 1908), appendix; cf. pp. 86, 91-92.
'"’Ramusio, Delle navigationi et viaggi, III, 423-432.
«• E. T. Hamy, " Le bas-relief de l’Hotel du Br6sil au Musee departemental
d’antiquites de Rouen,” Journal de la societe des americanistes de Paris, IV
(nouvelle series, 1907), 1-6.
87 Ferdinand Denis, Une fete bresilienne celebree a Rouen en 1550 (Paris,
1850).
 Brazilwood Traders and Coastguards 43

torial evidence was produced by artists in Europe under the

direction of the men who had been in Brazil. As corrobora¬
tion of any statements, therefore, it shows principally what
phases of Brazilian life interested the Europeans who had been
there.68
The French, whatever gayety their works may add to the
history of Brazil, were, from the point of view of the Portu¬
guese, a dangerous enemy, ready at all times to strike at the
lives and commerce of the Portuguese. The King of Portugal
accordingly sent a number of armed ships to Brazil from 1516
on, partly to protect the Portuguese brazilwood traders and
partly to assert the absolute right to the land that he claimed.
Of the complete activity of that coastguard, and of the other
ships sailing off the coast, little is known, for almost all infor¬
mation rests on the two reports of Christovao Jacques and
Pero Lopes de Sousa. As it was sent to expel the French,
reports of its actions are necessarily taken up with ambushes,
with the sudden sighting of the enemy beyond a protecting
cape, and with the sinking or driving away of his ships.
Of the prosaic details of life between the battles, even less
is known. What little there is, however, suggests how closely
Portuguese sailors followed the model of the brazilwood fac¬
tories in dealing with the natives. Indeed, it is in connection
with the evidence concerning the passage of ships up and down
the Brazilian coast that the first definite evidence occurs of the
exchange of goods for more than brazilwood.
The history of Christovao Jacques, the first coastguard, lies
equally between war and commerce.69 He was in Brazil be¬
tween 1516 and 1519 and established then a reputation for
ruthless fighting against the French. He went again in 1528
and repeated his earlier successes. Though principally a fighter,
he had other interests, for the King paid him in part for his

88 The effect of the Brazilian Indians on Europeans is thoroughly and de-

lightfully studied in A. A. de Mello Franco, O indio brasileiro e a revolugao
franceza (Rio de Janeiro, 1937). Cf., also, Paul Gaffarel, Histoire du Bresil
fran ga:s au seizieme siecle.
88 Though the history of Christovao Jacques is short, the documents bearing
on his life are not simple. The best recent study, together with the pertinent
documents, is by Antonio Baiao and Carlos Malheiro Dias, " A expedigao de
Christovao Jacques,” HCP, III, 59-94.
44 From Barter to Slavery

work against the French by granting him a license to trade in

brazilwood. To use his license, he followed the Portuguese
method of trading and established a factory. Details for the
study of its operation are entirely lacking, but its existence
should be considered in relation to the fact that he spent over
two years in Brazil on his first expedition and over a year
on his second. During his two trips, he was ranging the coast
hunting the French. The factory, accordingly, though essen¬
tially a trading post for brazilwood, appears as a base from
which he operated in patrolling the coast.
The first instance in which barter was used to obtain food,
however, comes not from the evidence of the coastguard or the
brazilwood traders but, entirely accidentally, from the account
of a ship that stopped in Brazil when detached from the India
fleet of 1519. The "Sao Hieronimo,” in no way connected
with the commerce or protection of Brazil, entered stormy
weather in the south Atlantic and, breaking her rudder, de¬
cided to make for Brazil. Finally reaching the coast, she
searched for a harbor where wood was available of a size
sufficient to allow repairs, and anchored in what may have been
Bahia de Todos os Santos. The Indians of the place were not
entirely friendly, but permitted some of the sailors to go even
to a village inland. The natives, too, gave the Portuguese
what food the land offered in exchange for fishhooks, pins,
and other cheap articles.70
The expedition of Pero Lopes de Sousa in 1531 and 1532,
in the account of which occurs the first reference to the use of
barter by the coastguard, differs from those of Christovao
Jacques because it was intended as much for exploring the far
reaches of the coast as for exterminating the French.71 Pero
Lopes did not at once set up a base from which to operate, but,
carrying out his double mission, spent his time sailing from

70 The "Sao Hieronimo” was preceded to Brazil in 1517 by the " Piedade,”
but of " Piedade ” almost nothing is known. For a full discussion of the visit
of the " Sao Hieronimo ” and its perspective, see my article " Colonial Brazil as a
Way Station for the Portuguese India Fleets,” pp. 454-465.
71 Pero Lopes de Sousa went to Brazil in charge of one ship of the fleet of
his brother, Martim Affonso de Sousa. Often he acted with his brother, but
for much of the time he was sailing alone to explore the coast. The account
of his explorations is the Sousa, Navegacao.
 Brazilwood Traders and Coastguards 45

Pernambuco to points far south of the brazilwood country, off

the present-day coast of Uruguay and southern Brazil.
At one landing on the coast of Uruguay, he found a hunting
tribe that shared its food with his Portuguese. The natives
seemed used to white men, for they were not afraid of artillery
fire.72 At another, his people exchanged many goods for many
fish.73 At still another, they went ashore to look for Indians
to learn from them where to get food and water. They took
with them goods for exchange, but had to return without water
because the Indians did not wish to give them any.74 In these
and in other instances of similar occurrences, the Portuguese
seemed to have assumed that the giving of goods was necessary
to obtain food.
Pero Lopes did not found brazilwood factories as Christovao
Jacques had done in Pernambuco, but he did establish food-
stations for the provisioning of his ships. He reached Guana-
bara Bay, the site of the future city of Rio de Janeiro, in April,
1531, where some of the crew built a walled fort. He remained
in the Bay repairing his ships and then sailed south.75 In May
of 1532, a year later, two ships of his expedition, homeward
73 Sousa, Navegagdo, I, 318-322. These Indians were always sad, as the
Portuguese thought. "... com nenhua cousa nossa folgavam, nem amostravam
contentamento com nada. Se traziam pescado ou carne davam-no-lo de graga,
e se lhe davam algua mercaderia nam folgavam; mostramos-lhe quanto traziamos;
nam se espantavam, nem haviam medo a artelharia; senam suspiravam sempre;
e nunca faziam modo senam de tristeza; nem me parece que folgavam com outra
cousa.” Aside from this touching scene, it should be noticed that the Portu¬
guese appeared surprised that these Indians should not be interested in barter.
73 Ibid., I, 305. For game and fish, the Portuguese gave rattles, glass objects,
and beads. (Ibid. I, 281-282.) At a meeting with Indians dressed in skins,
they gave glassware, beads, rattles, red caps, and a shirt, for venison, fish, and
mutton. (Ibid., I, 299-301.) Of one group of Indians thus bartering goods,
the Portuguese said "... ficaram tao contentes e mostraram tamanho prazer,
que parecia que queriam sair fora do seu siso.” (Ibid., I, 282.)
74 The men went with " . . . o batel e com mercaderia, ver se poderia trazer
algua agua, de que tinhamos muita necessidade: e se tornou sem trazer agua,
por lha nam querer dar a gente da terra.” (Ibid., I, 117-118.) In addition to
getting food from the Indians, the Portuguese also got some by their own
efforts. When his food-store was exhausted, Sousa at first thought of rejoining
his brother, but decided instead to live off the land. (Ibid., I, 278. Cf. also
I, 244-249, 283, 284, 293.)
75 He was here in company with his brother, Martim Affonso. The crew
was sent to put in order a shop for working iron to make the things that the
ships needed. The three months were spent in taking on food for one year
46 From Barter to Slavery

bound for Portugal from the south, stopped in Guanabara Bay.

The fort apparently was not only still in existence but seems
to have become a food-station for the provisioning of ships,
because the two ships, with their many sailors, stayed for only
forty days loading supplies for the three-months homeward
journey.76 The stay of so large a company of Portuguese in the
neighborhood of the fort strongly suggests that some Portu¬
guese had been in possession of the fort since its building a
year before, and that they had on hand an accumulation of
food for the ships.
Even a cursory examination of the behavior in Brazil of the
two Portuguese groups of brazilwood traders and coastguards
shows that in their economic relations with the Indians resem¬
blances between the two groups of Portuguese are more strik¬
ing than differences. Neither planted settlements, in the sense
of colonies, and, it seems, neither intended to. Though the
purpose of one was economic and the purpose of the other
was military, both obtained goods from the Indians and both
seemed to have assumed that barter was necessary to get those
goods. Both accustomed the natives with whom they met to
dealing with Europeans. It appears likely, therefore, that they
created a pattern of behavior that their Portuguese successors
could follow in later contacts with the natives.
******
Definite evidence for the period 1500-1533 is slight, but
what there is indicates that the Portuguese used barter when
they wished to obtain labor, food, brazilwood, or other wares
and services from the natives. The evidence does not indicate
their enslavement of the Indians to obtain such desiderata, and,
indeed, references in the evidence to enslaving the Indians for
use in Brazil do not occur until a later date. Thus, on the evi¬
dence that has been presented, the conclusion is that barter was

for four hundred men and in building two small ships. (Ibid., I, 185-187.)
While ashore, four men were sent to explore the interior and travelled 115
leagues in two months. (Ibid., I, 186.) The fleet was in Rio from April 30
to July 31, and sailed August 1.
78 " Neste rio de Janeiro estive tomando mantimento para 3 meses. . . . ”
The Portuguese arrived May 24, 1532, and left July 2. Ibid., I, 349-350.
 Brazilwood Traders and Coastguards 47

the usual method by which Europeans dealt with the natives

when they wished native goods or services.
The particular instance of brazilwood trading illustrates how
barter was used. The Portuguese wanted wood delivered to
them at their factories. They arranged with the Indians to
bring it and exchanged their trinkets and tools with the Indians
only after the wood had been delivered. The Indians thus
learned that they could not get beads or shirts simply for felling
and stripping a tree in the forest, but only for delivering the
wood at the factory in a form suitable for loading on the ships.
As far as the natives were concerned, they received the coveted
toys and bangles in return for giving the Portuguese certain
material objects, brazilwood or (as in the case of the coast¬
guard) food or other wares. Yet the Europeans saw that they
received two things for the one payment of trinkets. One
was the material objects themselves. The other was the labor
needed, for instance, for felling the trees, dressing the logs,
and transporting them to the factory. Two possibilities were
thus opened up for the later Portuguese. The first was the
continuation of barter, in the strict sense of the term: simply
the giving of goods for goods. The second was the use of
barter to obtain labor alone, and this second use was to become
increasingly important when the later Portuguese began to give
the natives goods to induce them to cultivate crops.
 Chapter III

THE DONATARIOS

Because the donatarios went to Brazil to establish plantations

from which to export crops and because their undertaking dif¬
fered markedly from that of the brazilwood traders and the
coastguard, they introduced new elements into the earlier ffco-
i nomic pattern. In the first place, their going to Brazil to live
distinguishes their colonies from the more or less transient
posts from which the traders had conducted their exploitation
of the land. In the second, the existence of their plantations
implies the need for abundant and disciplined labor and sug¬
gests that some other than the casual barter relation would be
necessary to provide it.
; To relate the period of the donatarios1 to those that pre¬
ceded and followed it, it is necessary to understand what the
donatarios were trying to do in Brazil and what were the re¬
sources on which they could draw. I At the same time, not they
alone but the Indians of Brazil as well must be examined in
more detail, for it was to these natives that the donatarios
turned for help. Their neecjexaggerated by their general want
of reserves ofto demand from
the Indians more labor and services than earlier Portuguese had
obtained by barter. Enslavement followed on many occasions
when the barter relation became inadequate, and in the general
disorder that went with the continuation of contact between
the two people, wars with the natives became so usual a con-
1 In addition to its treatment in such general works as Varnhagen s Hrstona
serai the period of the donatarios may be studied in J. F. de Almeida Prado s
general history in six volumes. So far untitled as a whole, he has issued two
volumes: Pernambuco e as capitanias do norte 1530-1630 (2 vols Sao Paulo,
1939 1941). The second volume about Pernambuco carries the subtitle. His-
toria’ da Formagao da Sociedade Brasileira.” An earlier work of his, Os
Primeiros povoadores do Brasil 1500-1530 (Sao Paulo, 1935) apparently is to
be incorporated into the final work. The extensive bibliographies that he gives,
including recent titles, offer the best single guide to the literature in point. As
a consequence, no reference is made here to many works relating to the period
and the place, and the reader is directed, instead, to consult Almeida Prado's
lists.
48
 The Donatarios 49

comitant of the growth of the settlements that some connection

l5^U.^e.Sted between them and pn^lpy^ppf “ ’
The donatarios did not go to Brazil entirely without models
to follow in establishing their colonies. One model, in par¬
ticular, was the method of dealing with the natives that had
been worked out by the brazilwood traders and the coastguard.
In this, barter was the principal element of which they could
make use. The other was the general model of how to estab¬
lish settlements. To some extent, they had but to apply in
Brazil the practices that generations of Portuguese colonists
had developed in the Atlantic islands and Africa. More imme¬
diately, they had before them the example of how to lay out a
town and plantations that was given them by Martim Affonso
de Sousa.2
Martim Affonso de Sousa, of the lesser nobility of Portugal,
had won the confidence of Dorn Joao for his sagacity and
prudence. Consequently, when Dorn Joao, apprehensive of the
French attacks on Brazil, looked for someone to send, he chose
Martim Affonso despite the fact that in 1530 Martim was only
thirty years of age. Dom Joao’s need for someone who com¬
bined resourcefulness and courage was great. His diplomatic
negotiations with the French king to exclude the French from
Brazil had failed. His coastguard had been successful only so
far as so small and infrequently sent a patrol could be in
ranging such an enormous coastline. Convinced that Portu¬
guese deeds were now needed more than French words, he
prepared an elaborate expedition to patrol Brazilian waters.
Perhaps influenced by the example of Christovao Jacques, he
planned to have the expedition found a base from which to
operate in expelling the French.

2 The life and works of Martim Affonso de Sousa are fully treated by Jordao
de Freitas, "A expedigao de Martim Affonso de Sousa,” HCP, III, 97-164.
The account of his exploration of the coast rests on the Sousa, Navegagao.
Much information of the early days of his settlement of Sao Vicente is drawn
from Frei Gaspar da Madre de Deus, Memorias para a historia da capitania de
Sao Vicente, ed. Affonso d’EscragnoIle Taunay (3d ed., Sao Paulo, 1920), first
published in 1797. There is. also an autobiography entitled Breuissima, e
sumaria relagao Que fiz de sua Vida e obras o grande Martim Affonso de Sousa,
referred to by Jordao de Freitas, cited above. This was published in the
Archivo bibliographico (Coimbra, 1877), pp. 89-90, 105-108, 139-148, 168-172.
This last I have not seen.
50 From Barter to Slavery

Martim Affonso received the command of the expedition

two ships, a caravel, and a galley—and sailed from Lisbon
toward the end of 1530. As agent of the King, he took with
him royal officials, soldiers, and priests. To aid him in the
foundation of his base of operations he took, besides the sailors
of his ships, some gentlemen, mechanics and laborers, and a
number of settlers, some with their wives. All told, he had
with him about four hundred persons. He reached the Brazilian
coast in January of 1531 and with his brother, Pero Lopes de
Sousa, spent a year in exploration3 and in capturing sue
French ships as he found. In January of 1532, his preliminary
explorations ended, he was off the coast of the present-day
state of Sao Paulo, and on the twenty-second he founded there
his settlement of Sao Vicente. His brother, Pero Lopes,
described with brevity the making of that settlement:
This land appeared so good to all of us that the captain [Martim
Affonso] determined to populate it, and gave to all the men lands tor
them to make farms. He made a town on the island of S. Vicente and
another nine miles inland, on a river called Piratininga. He divided
the people between these two towns and set up officials in them and
put all on a basis of justice. In this the people took much consolation
in seeing towns peopled; in having laws and religion and celebrating
marriages and living in a civilized way; in being each man his own

' When the Portuguese went ashore in Bahia, they found there a Portuguese
squawman, Diogo Alvares, called Caramuru by the Indians. He had been in
Brazil since about 1510, and continued to live there for some years after the
coming of Martim Affonso. In Sao Vicente, they found Joao Ramalho, whose
case was similar. The two squawmen were survivors of earlier and incom¬
pletely identified expeditions. Others like them lived in other parts of Brazil.
They are not here considered as a separate group of Portuguese in Brazil
because they were exceedingly few and they were Indian, not Portuguese, in
their habits of life. In the two instances of Alvares and Ramalho, all that is of
importance is that, in their delight at once more meeting Portuguese, they
induced their Indians to help the newcomers. Later, when settlements had
grown up that were more consistently European in character, the descendants
by Indian mothers often resisted the government and the church. Brought up
largely free of Portuguese traditions and faith, they much preferred what
seemed to the Portuguese officials a wild and barbarous style of life. For
Caramuru, see Varnhagen’s study of him. Revista do Instituto historico e geo¬
graphic brasileiro, X (1848), 129 f.; and one by Candido Mendes in the
same Revista, XXXIX (1876), 5 ff. For Ramalho, cf. Revista, II (1840),
529; XL (1877), part ii, 277-293; Revista do Instituto htstonco de Sao Paulo,
VII (1902), 70-79, 80-85, 255-269, 299; IX (1904), 1-19, 444-484, 563-569.
 The Donatarios 51

master; in having private wrongs redressed; and in having all the

other goods of life secure and easily had.4

The establishment of a civil government was only part of

Martim Affonso’s work. Though he left his settlement in 1534
to spend the rest of his life in India and Portugal,6 he provided

/ his settlers with the means of making themselves wealthy.

In 1533, sugar cane was introduced into the settlement and i
planted on some of the lands that he had given out.6 Possibly
in that year, or perhaps even earlier, he had cattle brought over
from the Old World,7 and, accordingly, for the first time pro¬
vided beasts of burden for the Portuguese in Brazil. While
there is no direct evidence of his action, he is also supposed to
have imported in 1535 Negro slaves to work on the sugar
plantations.8
Martim Affonso’s reports to the King, describing among
other things the continued and vigorous attacks of the French,
made plain to Dom Joao that further action was needed if he
wished to keep Brazil. And yet the problem was more than
one of defense, though that was the immediate and pressing
one. He had also to make Brazil more productive in an eco¬
nomic way so that it might bear some of the cost of defense at
a time when his Indian empire was becoming increasingly
costly. The solution to the problem that was applicable to the
entire coast was suggested by what Martim Affonso had done
in the particular case of Sao Vicente. Agriculture certainly
seemed possible, especially such profitable crops as sugar, and

* Sousa, Navega(ao, I, 340-342.

5 He returned to Portugal in 1534 and went to India as the commander of
that year’s fleet, and a again as commander, in 1541. Luiz de Figueiredo Falcao,
Livro em que se contem toda a fazenda (Lisbon, 1859), PP- 156, 159. In the
East, his labors won him a place in the Lusiad, canto X, lxiii, lxvii.
6 Frei Gaspar da Madre de Deus, Memorias, pp. 153-169; Soares, Tratado,
pp. 105-106.
7 Soares, Tratado, p. 106.
8 Simonsen, Historia economica do Brasil, I, 196; Paulo Merea, A solu^ao
tradicional da colonisa^ao do Brasil,’’ HCP, III, 180, does not refer to any such
importation. Pointing out that the Portuguese had for years been using Negro
slaves in the Atlantic islands, he says: ' Como nosso pais estava cheio de
escravos africanos, naturalissimo era que os levassem daqui para o Brasil e
com razao tem sido observado por varios autores que muitos desses escravos
terao ido logo com seus senhores a bordo dos primeiros navios.”
 52 From Barter to Slavery

4 defense seemed possible when based on a permanent settle-

ment. Dom Joao therefore decided to apply to Brazil the dona-
tarial system that had been used by the Portuguese in the
settlement of the Atlantic islands off the African coast.
In application between 1534 and 1536,® the donatarial system
meant the dividing up of the land into broad strips, called
. . captaincies, stretching from the Atlantic to the accepted but
vaguely-defined Tordesillas Line somewhere in the interior of
6 The term donatario (from donare, donatus) means the person to whom the
land was given. The land so given was called either capitania (captaincy) or
donataria.
The grants of lands and rights were made in cartas de doagdo and joraes on
the following dates:

Donatario Captaincy Carta de doagao

Duarte Coelho Pernambuco March 10, 1534 *
Francisco Pereira Coutinho Bahia April 5, 1534
Pedro do Campo Tourinho Porto Seguro May 27, 1534 *
Vasco Fernandes Coutinho Espirito Santo June 1, 1534 *
Pero Lopes de Sousa Tamaraca September 1, 1534
Antonio Cardoso de Barros no name November 19, 1535
Pedro de Goes Parahyba do Sul January 28, 1536
Aires da Cunha no name date unknown
Francisco Alvares de Andrade no name date unknown
Joao de Barros no name date unknown
Jorge de Figueiredo Correa Ilheos date unknown *
Martim Affonso de Sousa Sao Vicente date unknown *

Foral
Francisco Pereira Coutinho. August 26, 1534 *
Pedro do Campo Tourinho. September 23, 1534 *
Duarte Coelho. September 24, 1534 *
Martim Affonso de Sousa. October 6, 1534 *
Pero Lopes de Sousa. October 6, 1534
Vasco Fernandes Coutinho. October 7, 1534
Aires da Cunha. March 11, 1535
Joao de Barros. March 11, 1535
Jorge de Figueiredo Correa. April 1, 1535
Antonio Cardoso de Barros. November 20 1535
Pedro de Goes. February 29,’ 1536
Francisco Alvares de Andrade. date unknown

The cartas and foraes marked * are printed in Documentos historicos (41
vols. to date, Rio de Janeiro, 1928—; hereafter referred to as DH), XIII,
68U78, and the discussion of the rights and duties of the donatarios rests on
them.
The above table is based on one in HCP, III, 174. See also a map of the
captaincies, HCP, III, 222.
For the distinction between carta de doa(ao and foral, see below pp. 58-59,
note 35.
 The Donatarios 53

the continent. Each captaincy was given by the King to a dona-

tario, a person of wealth and position, who also received exten¬
sive civil and criminal powers to enable him to maintain himself
at the head of his settlers. To accompany the donatario but
independent of him, the King appointed certain royal officials,
factors and men from the treasury, to supervise the collection
of the King’s taxes from the donatario and his settlers.
It was not the great nobles of Portugal who took the original
grants of lands in Brazil as Martim Affonso’s fellow-donatarios.
Their want of interest in Brazil may be contrasted with earlier
days, when infants and dukes took grants of islands off the
coast of Africa.10 In their stead, the men who requested Bra¬
zilian lands, while trained in war or government, were only
of the gentry (pequena nobreza) or the middle class. Their
social position seems to have weighed less with the King than
their having fought in India or their having served in his
government in Portugal.
The prospective donatarios may be grouped in two general
classes. The first is made up of men who had had military
experience elsewhere in the Portuguese empire. Duarte Coelho,
of a gentle family, had gone to Brazil with his father, Gon^alo
Coelho, in 1503 on an exploring expedition. Then between
1509 and 1531 he served in India and Africa and, in 1533,
commanded a fleet sent to the Azores to safeguard the home¬
ward passage of the India fleet.11 Francisco Pereira Coutinho 12

10 It was not until after the foundation of the royal government under Tome
de Sousa that the Duke of Aveiro bought the captaincy of Porto Seguro from
the heirs of Pedro do Campo Tourinho. (Varnhagen, Historia geral, I, 388.)
For the grants of the islands, cf. Alguns documentos, pp. 14, 26, 27, 31, 32,
ranging from 1453 and 1462. Grants were also given to others than nobles.
(See below, note 35, p. 58.)
11 The leading work on Duarte Coelho is the first volume of J. F. de Almeida
Prado’s Pernambuco e as capitanias do norte. In it is a full treatment of the
material concerning Coelho that is used here, below, but the presentation is
from a more purely political and psychological viewpoint than the one here.
Cf., also, Pedro de Azevedo, " Os primeiros donatarios,” HCP, III, 194-200.
12 Azevedo, HCP, III, 214-215. He was the son of the alcaide-mor of the town
of Santarem. In his service in India he acquired the nickname of Rusticao, the
rustic. Notice the impression that he made on Soares: ” Quem quizer saber
quern foi Francisco Pereira Coutinho, lem os livros da India, e sabel-o-ha; e
verao seu grande valor e heroicos feitos dignos de differente descango do que
teve na conquista do Brasil. ...” Soares, Tratado, p. 50.
54 From Barter to Slavery

and Vasco Fernandes Coutinho,13 both of gentle blood, had

also fought in India. Antonio Cardoso de Barros was a soldier
who had been knighted (cavalleiro f dal go 14) for service in
India.18 Aires da Cunha, having served in India, later com¬
manded a fleet off the Azores.18 One prospective donatario,
Pedro de Goes, had not been to the East, but had served under
Pero Lopes de Sousa in his exploration of the Brazilian coast.17
The second class included men who were to some extent
creatures of the King. Joao de Barros, later the most illus¬
trious among them because of his Decadas da Asia, was factor
of the India House.18 Jorge de Figueiredo Correa, though
not of the old nobility, was of gentle birth and held the post
of secretary to the royal treasury.19 Fernando Alvares de
Andrade was treasurer-general of the kingdom.20 These men
had not all fought for the empire in India, but they were con¬
cerned with its riches and costs. Varnhagen suggests, in the
case of Correa, that the position that he held would keep him
well informed of all that happened overseas, and that his
opinions were guided by what he saw going on about him.21
Whatever the value of this suggestion, certainly these men were
well placed to take advantage of new information of overseas
affairs.22
18 Azevedo, HCP, III, 200-203. Azevedo says that he fought in India " sem ter
demonstrado qualidades de administrador e apenas as de valentia.” Gabriel
Soares, on the other hand, says: " Resao tinha Vasco Fernandes Coutinho de se
contentar com os grandes e heroicos feitos que tinha com as armas acabado nas
partes da India, onde nos primeiros tempos de sua conquista se achou, no que
gastou o melhor de sua idade. ...” Soares, Traiado, p. 76.
11 A cavalleiro fidalgo was a person of simple blood who had been knighted
and raised in rank for services to the king; a fidalgo cavalleiro, on the other
hand, was a knight of gentle or noble blood.
15 Azevedo, HCP, III, 211.
16 Ibid., p. 207. 17 Ibid., pp. 212-214.
18 Ibid., pp. 207-210. Joao de Barros was known at the time of his re¬
ceiving the grant as the factor of the India House. It was with this title that
he is referred to by Soares (" feitor que foi da casa da India ”). Soares, Tratado,
p. 18.
19 Azevedo, HCP, III, 205-206. He adds: " Nao era, portanto, de nobreza
muito aprimadora o novo donatario, mas a sua familia serviu a Casa Real com
toda a intimidade. ...”
20 Ibid., pp. 207-208. 81 Varnhagen, Historia geral, I, 170.
22 Of all the donatarios only four had any personal acquaintance with the
land to which they were going. Martim Affonso chose his existing settlement
and simply had its status changed to that of a captaincy. His brother, Pero
 The Donatarios 55
One donatario remains, Pedro do Campo Tourinho. Want of
information prevents saying whether he was of the military or
administrative group. All that is known is that he was a
substantial landholder in Portugal.23
With their experience, these men did not necessarily have
financial resources equal to the demands of colonization. They
bore the cost of the enterprise because the King, interested in
settling the land with as little expense to himself as possible,
gave no more than the grants of lands and powers. Conse¬
quently, the donatarios paid for the outfitting of the ships, the
buying of stores for use in Brazil, and the wages of soldiers,
artisans and settlers.24 How insufficient was the capital of
most of them is indicated by their fate. Duarte Coelho, with
a fortune made in India, felt the strain of spending several
thousand cruzados in establishing his settlement.25 Vasco Fer¬
nandes Coutinho and Francisco Pereira Coutinho both sold
properties in Portugal to augment their fortunes made, like
Coelho’s, in India. Even so, Vasco Fernandes’ settlement
having turned out badly, " he came to be given food for the
love of God, and . . . had no shroud of his own in which to be
buried.”28 Francisco Pereira lost all, including his life, in
Brazil and left his widow and children penniless.27 Pedro do

Lopes, likewise with personal knowledge of the coast derived from his ex¬
plorations, chose land in two places, next to his brother’s and far off in the
north. Pedro de Goes, Pero Lopes’ lieutenant in his explorations, chose the
region around the Parahyba do Sul river. Duarte Coelho selected Pernambuco,
the region nearest to Europe.
23Azevedo, HCP, III, 203-205. Soares credits him with being experienced in
the art of sailing. Soares, Tratado, p. 66.
21 Cf. Soares, Tratado, pp. 18, 25, 28, 51, 56, 66, 77, 81.
26 Soares makes the following comment: " Nestes trabalhos gastou Duarte o
velho muitos mil cruzados que adquiriu na India, a qual despeza foi bem
empregada, pois d'ella resultou ter hoje seu filho Jorge de Albuquerque Coelho
dez mil cruzados de renda. ...” Soares, Tratado, pp. 28-29.
26 Ibid., p. 79. In 1555, Duarte da Costa reported to the King that Vasco
Fernandes Coutinho had reached Bahia " velho, pobre e cansado.” Duarte da
Costa to D. Joao III, May 10, 1555, HCP, III, 375.
27 Soares, Tratado, p. 52. Soares rounds out his essay on the life of Coutinho
thus: " D’esta maneira acabou as maos dos Tupinambas o esforcado cavalleiro
Francisco Pereira Coutinho, cujo esforgo nao poderam render os Rumes e
Malabares da India, e foi rendido d’estes barbaros; o qual nao somente gastou
a vida n’esta pretensao, mas quanto em muitos annos ganhou na India com
tantas langadas e espingardadas, e o que tinha em Portugal, com o que deixou
sua mulher e filhos postos no hospital.”
56 From Barter to Slavery

Campo Tourinho and Pedro de Goes, having no Indian for¬

tunes, raised money as they could. Pedro do Campo sold his
large property in Portugal28 and Goes associated himself with
Martim Ferreira, a capitalist with several thousand cruzados
ready for investment. Goes went to Brazil and Ferreira stayed
in Portugal to watch the speculation from there.29
The donatarios were granted twelve captaincies,30 stretches
of coast thirty to one hundred leagues in length, that were
marked out by the King to occupy all the coastline that lay on
the Portuguese side of the Tordesillas Line. Four captaincies,
lying far to the north between the Parahyba do Norte and the
Amazon rivers, were never occupied, though the donatarios
attempted to settle there.31 The remaining eight, reaching
from the Parahyba do Norte to the present-day state of Sao
Paulo, took up the northern and southern regions of the rest
of the coast. Lying from north to south, they were in order:
Tamaraca, occupied by Pero Lopes de Sousa
Pernambuco, occupied by Duarte Coelho
Bahia, occupied by Francisco Pereira Coutinho
Ilheos, occupied by Jorge de Figueiredo Correa 32

28 Ibid., p. 66.
20 Ibid., p. 80. Cf. also the letter of Pedro de Goes to Martim Ferreira,
August 18, 1545, HCP, III, 262, which describes the relation between the two
men.
50 The distribution of the lands of Pero Lopes de Sousa complicates the count
of the captaincies. He did not take his grant all in one piece, but, as has just
been said, broke it in two. One part of his lands lay in the north (Tamaraca
on the rio Parahyba do Norte) ; the rest, called Santo Amaro, lay partly to the
south of Sao Vicente and partly intermixed with those of Sao Vicente. To all
intents and purposes, the Santo Amaro section may be considered as a part of
Sao Vicente for it was so treated by the occupants of both Santo Amaro and
Sao Vicente. If Santo Amaro is counted separately, as is sometimes done, the
count of the captaincies reaches thirteen, though the number of donatarios
remains at twelve.
81 These four were the grants of joao de Barros, Aires da Cunha, Antonio
Cardoso de Barros, and Fernando Alvares de Andrade. Joao de Barros sent his
two sons and his settlers. First, the fleet was lost on the shoals off Maranhao,
but many of the people escaped to the shore. Next, Indian attacks killed off
many of the survivors. The remainder, deprived of the means of communicating
with the other captaincies and so getting aid, finally gave up and returned to
Portugal. Soares, Tratado, pp. 18-19.
82 Correa did not wish to give up his government post in Portugal, so he sent
out his expedition of settlers under a locum-tenens, Francisco Romeiro (sic), a
Spaniard. Ibid., p. 56.
 The Donatarios 57
Porto Seguro, occupied by Pedro do Campo Tourinho
Espirito Santo, occupied by Vasco Fernandes Coutinho
Parahyba do Sul, occupied by Pedro de Goes.
Sao Vicente, occupied by Martim Affonso de Sousa (together
with Santo Amaro, belonging to Pero Lopes de Sousa).

A glance at the map shows that Pernambuco, Bahia, and

Porto Seguro lay in the widest part of the coastal plain of the
northern region, though Porto Seguro was somewhat cramped
toward its southern end by the swing toward the sea of the
southern end of the plateau. Espirito Santo and Parahyba do
Sul occupied just that stretch of coast where the plateau reaches
the sea, and their lands, though in some places level, were
broken up by small ranges of hills. Sao Vicente, cut off from
Parahyba do Sul by the bulk of the coastal ranges around Rio
de Janeiro, included some islands and narrow lands at the foot
of the scarp of the plateau, but had most of its occupiable
land a little inland, on the plateau itself.
Within his captaincy, each donatario behaved much like all
the others in planting his settlement. The principal group of
settlers was in a town directly on the coast. For the protection r
of the ships that were to come, the town was laid out in an
inlet or harbor, as at Bahia, or a little way up a river, whose
estuary would offer shelter from storms. Often the exact site
in the sheltered region would be determined by the presence of
convenient springs of good water. Generally, the town was
laid out in a stretch of level land in which communication was
easy. Correa’s lieutenant, on his way to settle the captaincy
of Ilheos, first chose a site on the island of Tinhare, on the
slopes of a bold hill. Possibly the defensibility of the site
attracted him, but very shortly he and his settlers abandoned
the island and moved to level ground on the mainland at the
mouth of the Ilheos river.33
To control the settlements that they planted, the donatarios
received ample powers from the King. The premise on which
the powers were given was that the King was the owner, and
the donatario, the occupant of the lands, was the King’s proxy.
Nevertheless, the donatario was not a royal official and was not
concerned with the carrying out of the King’s orders in Brazil.
83 "... do qual sitio se nao satisfez.” Ibid.; South America Pilot, p. 280.
58 From Barter to Slavery

Royal officials, a factor, a collector of customs, and notaries,

were sent by the King to administer the monopolies that he
claimed on certain articles.34
With the exception of the limitation implied by the King’s
monopolies and the presence of his officers, the donatario had
a free hand. His whole land and his powers were given him
in a carta de doafao, or letter of grant, that gave him political
authority and the control of economic matters. He was given
the right of capital punishment without appeal over slaves,
heathen, Christian peons, and free men, and could act as an
appeal court in cases of less importance. He could also found
towns and grant municipal rights to them, and could name all
officials except those in charge of royal administration. Fur¬
ther, he was entitled to levy certain taxes on his settlers for his
Support.
In addition to his whole grant of land, the donatario was
given a strip ten leagues wide as his personal property. The
bulk of his revenue was to come from this land, and what he
received from the settlers in the way of tithes or taxes was to
be in addition to it. He could grant in the other parts of his
territory measured pieces of land on a limited tenure, with the
proviso that he could reclaim them if he thought that the
settlers had not made good use of them. In return for the
grant, he received a tithe from the landholder. Then he could
receive tithes on such an article as fish. Most important of all
was his power of granting licenses for certain works. No mills
of whatever description and no salt-works could be built with¬
out his license. Merchants among the settlers, or the settlers
themselves, while they could trade freely among themselves,
could not trade with the Indians except with his license.3SB
84 Max Fleiuss, Historia administrativa do Brasil (2d ed., Sao Paulo, 1926),
pp. 9-13, is an excellent summary of the rights and powers of the King and of
the donatarios. The freedom of action of the royal officials is stated in the
carta de doagao.
35 This summary of a carta de doagao is based on the cartas of Duarte Coelho,
HCP, III, 309-312; and of Martim Affonso de Sousa, DH, XXX, 136-149. See
also the King’s instruments to Martim Affonso de Sousa, empowering the
donatario to create notaries and other judicial officials (HCP, III, 160), and to
give lands in sesmarias (ibid.).
The powers over economic and political matters given to the donatarios to
some extent follow old forms that the Portuguese had in other parts of the
 The Donatarios 59

The very appearance of the settlements suggests how the

donatarios intended to recoup their heavy expenses and make
use of the powers given them by the King. On landing, they
and their settlers36 laid out their town. Allowing for un¬

world. The King at this time, even with the reports of Martim Affonso before
him, had still no clear idea of what the land was like or what had best be
done with it. Consequently, many of the provisions in his cartas de doagao
were exceedingly broad and could fit almost any circumstance.
The antiquity of the models followed by the King in granting lands in Brazil
is illustrated by grants of his predecessors to Portuguese who went to the
islands to settle. In the grant to Bertholameu Perestrello, holder of the island
of Porto Santo, Perestrello was commanded by the donor. Prince Henry, to
maintain the land for the Prince and to exercise in it the Prince’s justice and
laws. As the agent of the Prince, Perestrello was to enjoy full civil and
criminal jurisdiction. The grant made possession hereditary in Perestrello’s
family or in the family of the person to whom he might assign his possession.
He was given a monopoly on all mills (moynhos de pam) and on all ovens
(foornos de pam). No mills could be built without his license. Salt was
likewise his monopoly. The settlers were required to pay him certain stipulated
taxes and tithes and he, in turn, was required to pay others to the Prince. He
was empowered to give lands to the settlers for terms of five years, with the
reservation that the lands would revert to him if they had not been properly
used within that time. This grant was dated November 1, 1446. Alguns
documentos, pp. 10-11.
The grant to Perestrello, it will be noticed, combined in one instrument the
granting of lands and powers (the carta de doa(do properly speaking), with
the statement of the obligations of the donatario and the settlers (the foral).
Judging from the documents, in ibid., the crown began, shortly after 1450, to
separate the two instruments. The carta de doa(ao given in 1462 to Joao
Vegado grants him all political and judicial rights and, indeed, grants such
clearly stated rights in order to attract settlers to the islands that Vegado was
to settle. (Ibid., February 19, 1462, pp. 28-30.) The one given Fernao Telles,
likewise, gives judicial and political rights. (Ibid., January 28, 1474, pp. 38-
40.) Neither, it must be noticed, includes a statement of the obligations of the
donatario to the crown or of the settlers to the donatario. The form of the
grants to the Brazilian donatario follows this later model of dividing the grant
into the carta proper and the foral.
88 Of the four hundred or so persons who came with Martim Affonso, only
nine were fidalgos. Only seven were cavalleiros fidalgos, that is, men not of
gentle birth who had been knighted for services to the crown. Two of these
seven had served in the navy. Besides these, there were two who had been
mo (os da camara to the King. These eighteen persons of rank, eleven of
gentle birth, did not by reason of their birth necessarily have fortunes as well.
One was so poor that his descendants were unknown. Frei Gaspar da Madre
de Deus, Memorias, pp. 145-166.
With this statement should be compared what Soares says of the founders of
Espirito Santo. In the fleet of the donatario there embarked "... entre
fidalgos e criados d’el-Rei, sessenta pessoas, entre as quaes foi D. Jorge de
Menezes, o de Maluco, e D. Simao de Castello Branco, que por mandado de
60 From Barter to Slavery

familiar building materials and for the greater need of defense,

they sought in their designs to recall the Portugal from which
they had, to a large extent, cut themselves off by selling their
property. A fort was built, at first generally of logs and thatch
only strong enough to turn Indian arrows. Taken altogether,
it was no very pretentious structure. A wall was thrown up
around the fort enclosing a space large enough for the houses
of the settlers. Very possibly, some houses would be outside
the wall because the space enclosed would be too small for the
whole population. Houses were built of whatever was the
local building material—wood, thatch, plaster, or, in some
instances, stone. Down by the water would be warehouses in
which would be stored whatever the settlers exported or im¬
ported. Some houses, distinguished in no way from the others
in architecture or adornment, would be set aside for the use
of the royal officials or those acting for the donatario. The
priest had his church; the town council (camara) had its meet¬
ing-place; the officials of whatever sort had their treasury and
custom house; and the jail made plain the authority of the
King and of the donatario.37

S. A. iam cumprir suas penitencias a estas partes." (Soares, Hr at ado, p. 77.)

Compared with Sao Vicente, the number of sixty seems high. The settlers of
Espirito Santo included, as is indicated by the phrase "... que . . . iam
cumprir suas penitencias . . . ,” some degredados. The term, which means
strictly someone reduced in rank as a punishment for some crime, should not
be translated simply as " convict.” Portuguese subjects who enjoyed certain
privileges had the right to have some sentences commuted to banishment to the
Portuguese lands overseas. Such privileged persons were prelates, fidalgos,
squires, merchants with a capital of one hundred thousand reaes, and others.
(Ordenagdes manuelinas, V, xl.) Because the commutation was to banishment,
the term degredados is often used as a synonym for " banishment,” withal not
always correctly. How many of these degredados went to Espirito Santo is not
at all certain, nor is it clear who were the " criados d’el-Rei ” referred to by
Soares. Presumably they were royal fiscal and judicial officials. The wide
variation between the reports of Madre de Deus and Soares indicates the
difficulty in describing the classes of settlers.
37 The picture of a town and its surroundings is based on the Soares, Tratado,
passim. The fullest description of any town in Brazil in the sixteenth century
is of Bahia as built by Tome de Sousa in 1549. This is not, strictly speaking, a
donatarial town, but its details accord with those of the earlier towns. A great
deal of information about the materials used in the construction of houses and
about their use may be found in the Registo dos mandados de pagamentos e de
outras despesas, DH, XXXVII-XXXVIII.
 The Donatarios 61

Outside the wall lay the lands of the settlement, ample in

quantity and to be had for the asking. The donatario, em¬
powered to do so, gave measured lands to any respectable
person who asked for them, receiving a tithe in return. The
easy terms of landholding are in just the payment of the tithe.
No fixed sum was stipulated, but, rather, a sliding scale of pay¬
ment varying with the fruit of the land.33 Unimpeded by
onerous fixed rents at the very beginning of the cultivation of
the allotments, the settlers laid out two kinds of farms. One \
was food-farms, called.mgas^ given over mainly to the cultiva¬
tion of mandioca. -The other was plantations, called fazendas,
where principally sugar-was.grown,38 though some cotton was
cultivated as well.40 At points convenient to several fazendas,

88 Cf., for example the King’s letter empowering Martim Affonso de Sousa
to grant sesmarias, HCP, III, 160.
39 See below, p. 103, for the distinction between rogas and fazendas. The
word roga in sixteenth-century Brazilian usage meant a patch where foodstuffs,
principally mandioca, were grown, and had the connotation of a clearing in
the woods, cut back and burned over to prepare the ground for planting. Such
usage is different from that in Portugal, and, in some particulars, from modern
Brazilian usage. The changes in the character of this word may be traced in
Raphael Bluteau, Vocabulario portuguez e latino (10 vols., Lisbon, 1712-27);
Francisco Solano Constancio, Novo diccionario critico e etymologico da lingua
portugueza (Paris, 1843); Carlos Teschauer, S. J., Novo diccionario nacional
(2d ed., Porto Alegre, 1928) ; Chermont Miranda, Glossario paraense ou col-
lecgdo de vocabulos peculiares a Amazonas e especialmente a ilha de Marajo
(Para, 1906) ; Beaurepaire Rohan, Diccionario de vocabulos brazileiros (Rio de
Janeiro, 1889) ; Rodolpho Garcia, Diccionario de brasileirismos (Peculiaridades
pernambucanas) (Rio de Janeiro, 1915); and Bernadino Jose de Souza,
Diciondrio da terra e gente do Brasil (4th ed., Sao Paulo, 1939; originally
entitled Onomastica geral da geografia brasileira).
40 Cf. Capistrano de Abreu and Rodolpho Garcia, eds., Dialogos das grandezas
do Brasil (“ Publicagoes da Academia Brasileira—Historia,” Rio de Janeiro,
1930), p. 152; Pero de Magalhaes Gandavo, Tratado da terra do Brasil e his¬
toria da provincia Santa Cruz, eds. Afranio Peixoto, Rodolpho Garcia, and
Capistrano de Abreu (Rio de Janeiro, 1924), pp. 38-40; Manuel da Nobrega,
Cartas do Brasil, 1549-1560, eds. Valle Cabral and Rodolpho Garcia ("Publi-
cagoes da Academia Brasileira: Cartas Jesuiticas I,” Rio de Janeiro, 1931;
referred to hereafter as Nobrega), p. 85.
References to cotton occur frequently throughout the early history of Brazil.
According to Watt, the plant in question is the Gossypium brasiliense, Macf.,
called kidney cotton from the shape of the seeds. It is indigenous to South
America, more especially Brazil and Guiana. It is not to be confused with the
so-called tree cotton (G. arboreum). G. brasiliense is a sub-arboreous bush
with very large leaves. As a shrub it reaches between 4 and 5 feet in height,
but occasionally becomes a small tree. Sir George Watt, The Wild and Culti-
62 From Barter to Slavery

mills (engenhos) were built to grind the sugar. In Sao Vicente,

Martim Affonso early ordered the building of engenhos to care
for the cane that he had imported. The other donatarios sent
to him for cane with which to set out their own plantations.41
Pernambuco had quantities of cane planted, and by 1542 had
one mill almost completed.42 Two mills were in operation in
Bahia 43 and several apiece in Porto Seguro 44 and Ilheos.45 At
Parahyba two were built before 1545, and when they were
destroyed, one was built to replace them.46 Espirito Santo
seemed especially prosperous. In 1545, it had five mills run by
water- and two by cattle-power. In addition it had two more
water-mills and one more cattle-power one in building. All
were to be ready by the end of the year, though things were
done more slowly than in Portugal. Even so, the mills were

rated Cotton Plants of the World: a Revision of the Genus Gossypium . . .

(London, 1907), pp. 17, 295-315.
In all probability, the early collection of cotton in Brazil was from wild
bushes. It will be recalled that in the stores of the " Pelerine ” and her fortress
in Pernambuco were about 300 quintals of cotton. See above, p. 38, note 55.
Later, the bushes were cultivated, as is well indicated by Soares’ description of
their being set out like quince-trees in an orchard. (Soares Tratado, p. 234.)
Whether the bushes treated this way were of the original G. brasiliense or were
an importation is not clear.
The cultivation of cotton, as may be seen later, was undertaken by Indian
parishes under the Jesuits in order to supply cloth with which to mitigate the
nakedness of the Indians. In addition, Watt (p. 303) points out that perhaps
the first cargo regularly shipped to Europe was in 1565, from Pernambuco.
Even though it was cultivated at many points of the coast, cotton did not be¬
come a great crop. It seldom is mentioned in descriptions of the products of
Brazil, where most attention is given to the spectacular crops of sugar and
tobacco. For this comparatively slight treatment, cf. Dialogos das grandezas do
Brasil, pp. 32, 52, 152-153, 191.
41 Soares, Tratado, p. 106.
43 Duarte Coelho to D. Joao III, April 27, 1542, HCP, III, 313.
43 It is possible that there were more. "... uma povoagao e fortaleza sobre
o mar, onde ... os moradores fizeram suas rogas e lavouras. D’esta povoagao
para dentro fizeram uns homens poderosos, que com elle foram, dois engenhos
de assucar. ...” Soares, Tratado, p. 51.
44 Ibid., p. 66. Later, after 1550, in the time of the Duke of Aveiro, who
had bought the captaincy, there were seven or eight mills. Ibid., p. 67.
48 Ibid., p. 57.
48 These two mills were operated by horsepower. (Letter of Pedro de Goes
to Martim Ferreira, August 18, 1545, HCP, III, 262.) The one mill built later
was operated by water. (Letter of Pedro de G6es to D. Joao III, April 29,
1546, HCP, III, 263.)
 The Donatarios 63
turning out about three hundred arrobas of sugar a year, not all
of it of the finest quality, to be sure, but with the best among
it equal to that from Madeira.47 The figures of the number of
sugar mills do not give an altogether complete picture of how
the fazendas were laid out, for fazenda and engenho, planta¬
tion and mill, are not synonymous terms, and there were many
more plantations than mills. Often a settler would build a
mill for the use of his own plantations. Other settlers, instead
of building mills of their own, bought their cane to be ground
at his mill for a fee.48 In short, the settlements that the dona¬
tarios and their followers laid out were intended to produce
crops for export, with sugar as the principal crop.
So thoroughgoing a commitment to agriculture, so single an
objective of producing raw materials for a Portuguese market,
suggest how great was the donatarios’ expenditure of money
and materials. Indeed, in many ways, the expenditure ap¬
peared entirely justified, for the market existed, shipping could
be arranged,49 and the soil appeared generally fit for the work.
What was lacking, however, in view of the small number of
Portuguese in Brazil, was an ample number of laborers.
As laborers, the Indians who surrounded each settlement
appeared to offer the help that the Portuguese needed. The
means of obtaining help was at first in the familiar pattern in
which barter played so large a part and which had before
enabled only a few Portuguese to gain the help of many
Indians. Now, though the Indians had always had much that
the Portuguese could use immediately, as, for instance, food, it
was their labor in particular that was needed to allow the opera¬
tion of the settlements as centers of agricultural production.
These Indians to whom the settlers turned were a simple
people in their economy and their government, with few and

47 Letter of Ambrosio de Meira to D. Joao III, Espirito Santo, September 26,

1545, Noticias antigas do Brasil 1531-1551 (Separate from Anais da Biblioteca
Nacional do Rio de Janeiro, LVII, 1940), p. 12; Soares, Tratado, p. 77, gives
four mills, adding that cane grew well in the region.
48 Letter of Pedro de Goes to D. Joao III, August 18, 1545, HCP, III, 262.
48 As a rule, the carrying of crops to Portugal seems to have been done not
by the donatarios but by shippers who sent their vessels for the cargo. Cf. letter
of Ambrosio de Meira to D. Joao III, Espirito Santo, September 26, 1545,
Noticias antigas do Brasil, 1531-1551, p. 13.
'64 From Barter to Slavery

easily satisfied needs. A staple crop and a simple division of

labor took care of the one, and sporadic wars and ritual anthro¬
pophagy added interest to the other. They were all stone-ag-
people, who for many years before the Portuguese reached
Brazil had been' migrating along the coast from the south to
the north. Some tribes among them were entirely nomadic,
but the majority used to settle in one locality for a while before
moving on to another. The entirely nomadic tribes wandered
in search of game for food, but the more settled ones, like¬
wise eating fish and game, seasonally cultivated patches of
mandioca in clearings of the forest. The women tended the
patches and prepared farinha from the plants, while the men
hunted or fished. The village, consisting of a number of large
sleeping-huts surrounded by a stockade, stood in another clear¬
ing close to the cultivated patches.
Mandioca 50 deserves special mention as the staple food of
the Indians, for its use was not only universal among them but
also became so among the Portuguese. The manioc plant
(Manihot utilissima Pohl) grows rapidly from cuttings to a
height of about six feet. Within a year it produces a root
about three feet long, which is poisonous if eaten raw. To
prepare it for food, it is ground up and soaked in water for a
certain length of time. The poisonous substance passes into
*° Because of the root from which the flour was made, it was often called
farinha de pao (wood-flour). Usually it was called mandioca or, simply,
farinha. Unless some qualification was added, as, for instance, farinha de
trigo (wheat-flour), the word farinha, as used in the regions where mandioca
is grown, may be taken to mean this flour made of the manioc root.
References to, and descriptions of, mandioca are frequent in sixteenth-century
writings about Brazil. One of the best is in the seventeenth-century work,
Dialogos das grandezas do Brazil, pp. 175-179. For a photograph of a modern
mandioca-field (mandiocal), see Boletim da TJniao Panamericana, XLII, No. 4
(April, 1940), 217. In the southern part of Brazil, where corn (maize) is the
staple instead of mandioca, the term farinha is applied to corn-flour.
Cf., also, for a sketch of agricultural methods used in Brazil for mandioca,
milho, etc., A. Gomes Carmo, Consideragoes historicas sobre a agricultura no
Brasil (" Servigo de publicagoes agricolas,” Ministerio da Agricultura, Rio de
Janeiro, 1939), pp. 1-7. According to the prospectuses issued for the HCP, the
final volume was to have contained an article by Almirante Almeida d E^a,
entitled " O comercio e a agricultura brasileira no seculo XVI.” Publication
of this and some other articles was prevented by a shortage of funds. I have
not been able to ascertain whether this article, if written, has since been
published elsewhere.
 The Donatarios 65

the water and, when the mixture is then pressed, goes off with
the surplus water. The remaining substance, a coarse white
flour, is next dried over a fire and is ready for use. The finer
part, when sieved out, becomes tapioca, and the rest mandioca
proper. An especially durable and coarse variety that could be
kept for a long period was called farinha da guerra (war-
flour), reminiscent of the parched corn used by North Ameri¬
can Indians when on the warpath. The ordinary flour, whether
for this or for a more pacific use, could be stored for some
months, perhaps years.
In each Indian tribe, as a rule, one warrior was given special
powers in time of war, but otherwise he shared influence over
the tribe with the witchdoctor. In harmony with such small
internal development, there was but slight political relation
between the tribes. Classification by language, accordingly,
has been much more extensively applied in distinguishing
tribes. One whole group of tribes, classified by language as
Tupi-Guaranis, invaded the coast of Brazil and drove to the
north or into the interior other tribes of a different language
group. Among the Tupi-Guaranis, the rulers of the litoral at
the time of the arrival of the Portuguese, the principal division
was into Carijos, Tupinambas, and Tupiniquins, subdivided into
several smaller groups.
The fondness for war of the tribes reflected a fairly stable
traditional enmity that divided the Tupinambas from the
Tupiniquins and both from the Carijos. The Carijos lived in
the vicinity of and to the south of Sao Vicente. The Tupi¬
nambas, strongest around Rio de Janeiro, were also on the
northeast coast between the Sao Francisco river and the Rio
Grande do Norte. The Tupiniquins occupied the rest of the
coast—between the Carijos of Sao Vicente and the Tupinambas
of Rio de Janeiro, and between Rio de Janeiro and the Sao
Francisco, with a great number around Bahia. These general
regions were not fixed, for tribes of one would on occasion
invade another region and for a time maintain themselves in
enclaves in it. Though the fighting, aided by the propinquity
of the regions, appears to have been frequent, the motives, as
well as the original causes of the struggles, remain obscure. No
attempt seems to have been made to exterminate or entirely
66 From Barter to Slavery

subject an enemy in a war. Rather, only two results seem to

have been sought by some tribes among the three large divi¬
sions. One was the capturing of a prisoner from the enemy
for the purposes of ritual anthropophagy. An elaborate code
had been set up among the tribes as to the treatment of the
prisoner from the time of the battle to the moment of his
braining by a warrior among his captors. The other seems to
have been the enslaving of captives who were not eaten, for
whatever reason, by the victors. A great deal about the ritual
anthropophagy of some of the tribes was soon known by Euro¬
peans, who were, quite reasonably, deeply impressed by this
phase of native life in Brazil. Knowledge of slavery among
the natives came soon afterwards.
Wars directed toward both these ends were in progress when
the Portuguese and other Europeans came. At first, it ap¬

Ipeared immaterial to the natives of either group whether they

traded with the French or with the Portuguese, but in time a
distinction appeared. The Tupinambas chose the French as
friends and allies and the Tupiniquins chose the Portuguese.
The reason for the choice is far from readily apparent, but,
the choice once made, it was adhered to with remarkable stead¬
fastness by both tribes.51
These Indians of whatever tribes, with whom the Portuguese
61 This account of the Indians of Brazil draws heavily on Capistrano de
Abreu, Capitulos de historia colonial, pp. 11-14; his prolegomena to Frei Vicente
do Salvador, Historia do Brasil 1500-1627 (Sao Paulo, 1918), pp. 8-12, his
notes to Varnhagen, Historia geral, I, 14-60, passim; and Estevao Pinto, Os
Indigenas do Nordeste (2 vols., Sao Paulo, 1935, 1938). It also uses Lery,
Histoire; Thevet, Singvlaritez; Soares, T rat ado; Hans Staden, Warhafftige His¬
toria. On the Tupis in particular, use has been made of Alfred Metraux, La
civilisation materielle des tribus Tupi-Guarani (Paris, 1928) , Migrations
historiques des Tupi-Guarani,” Journal de la societe des americanistes de Paris,
XIX (1927), 1-45.
It is important to notice that the details of Indian life were not necessarily
known to the Portuguese, despite the fact that brazilwood traders and coast¬
guards had preceded the donatarios. The donatarios, for instance, planted their
settlements in lands given them on a map by the King of Portugal. Further,
they chose their sites because of good shelter for the ships, general defensibility,
good water supply, or good plantation land and not because of their knowledge
of the sort of Indians in the neighborhood. Francisco Pereira Coutinho, as an
example, planted his town of Bahia among the Tupinambas who were tradi¬
tionally allied with the French and suffered as a consequence. The same may
be said for Pero Lopes de Sousa’s settlement of Tamaraca.
 The Donatarios 67

had now to deal, were in some cases already accustomed to the

use of barter. The Portuguese, mainly concerned with build¬
ing houses and fortifications and clearing fields, accordingly
dealt with them for labor and food during the early days of
their settlements. Pedro do Campo Tourinho, putting down
his town of Porto Seguro among the Tupiniquins, arranged a
peace with them after a series of skirmishes. Then the Indians,
for barter, helped the Portuguese lay out fields and planta¬
tions.52 In Pernambuco, the captaincy of Duarte Coelho, the
local Indians, after some skirmishes, also helped the Portu¬
guese, in return for iron tools, by doing heavy hauling and
other rough work in building engenhos.63 In Parahyba, Pedro
de Goes had established his town and then had had some
Indians plant sugar cane on an island in the river. To prepare
the way for the building and operating of a mill on the island,
he next sent four men out to direct the Indians in clearing the
ground and getting in as large a crop as possible.64 In this
third case, there is no evidence of the method of payment, but
the similarity to the first two argues in favor of barter.
Barter was also used to get food from the Indians. The
settlers in Espirito Santo began dealing with Indians for this
purpose. One tribe, living fourteen leagues away at the mouth
of the Reis Magos river, had been growing much food on the
fertile land in the valley and around the mouth of the river. It
is possible that the trade between the Portuguese and the
natives led to some extension of planting by the natives, who
began a sort of surplus export.65 In Pernambuco, the settlers
were depending regularly on natives who came to them to barter
food.56 The settlers in Bahia were likewise dependent on the

63 " . . . mas como assentaram pazes, ficou o gentio quieto, e d’ahi diante
ajudou aos moradores fazer suas rogas, e fazendas, a troco de resgate, que por
isso lhe davam.” Soares, Tratado, pp. 66-67.
53 Duarte Coelho to D. Joao III, December 20, 1546, HCP, III, 314. Cf.
below, p. 75, note 92, concerning more skirmishes in 1548.
64 Pedro de Goes to Martim Ferreira, August 18, 1545, HCP, III, 262.
65 Soares comments on the fertility of the soil and the abundance of fish in
the river. "... e no tempo que estava povoado de gente, havia n’elle muitos
mantimentos que aqui iam resgatar os moradores do Espirito Santo, o que
causava grande fertilidade.” Soares, Tratado, p. 75.
66 " . . . e nos vynhao a vender os mantymentos de que temos assaz necesydade.
...” Duarte Coelho to D. Joao III, December 20, 1546, HCP, III, 314.
68 From Barter to Slavery

nearby natives. The case of Bahia is a very interesting one in

illustrating the attitudes of the natives as well as the Portu¬
guese toward barter. The natives who had been supplying
food, presumably for barter, became angry with the Portuguese
and, rising up, drove them into their fortifications. Wfien the
Portuguese, after seven or eight years of intermittent fighting,
were leaving for want of food and security, the Indians
promised peace, because " if the Portuguese went away, the
Indians would be lacking in the wares that the Portuguese had
given them in exchange for food.” 57 The promise appears to
have been a ruse, for when the Portuguese did return they
were set on and nearly all, including the donatario himself,
were killed. Aside from confirming the use of barter at one
time in Bahia, the incident, for all its appearance of a
strategem, suggests how strongly the promise of the continua¬
tion of barter appealed to the Portuguese.68
Aside from these specific references, it is extremely likely
that the Portuguese in all of the captaincies dealt for food
with the Indians. The Indians among whom the settlements
were planted were all settled folk with varying degrees of agri¬
cultural skill. The Tupinambas, around Pernambuco and Bahia,
had perhaps the most highly developed agriculture of any
tribe.59 The Tupiniquins, around the settlements of Ilheos,
Porto Seguro, and Espirito Santo, were less given to farming,
but were known for their hunting and fishing.60 The rest of
the coastal Indians, the Goitacazes, who were a branch of the
Tupinambas, were around Parahyba. They did not have much
agriculture and seem to have planted only mandioca. In short,

67 " . . . E vendo este capitao sua gente, que ja era mui pouca, tao deter-
minada, ordenou de a por em salvo e passou-se por mar com ella em uns
caraveloes que tinha, para a capitania dos Ilheos: do que se espantou o gentio
muito, e arrependido da ruim vizinhanga que tinha feito, movido tambem de
seu interesse, vendo, que como se foram os portugueses, lhe ia faltando os
resgates, que lhes elles davam a troco de mantimentos, ordenaram de mandar
chamar Francisco Pereira mandando-lhes prometter toda a paz e boa amizade, o
qual recado foi d’elle festejado. ...” Soares, Tratado, p. 52.
58 For a further treatment of this incident, see below, p. 74.
50 Soares, Tratado, pp. 376-378, has a detailed description of the habits of
the Tupinambas.
60 Soares, Tratado, p. 72, gives the impression that they did no farming at all.
This is incorrect.
 The Donatarios 69
all the tribes were producing food and there is no reason to
suppose that they could not have produced a surplus for barter
to the Portuguese.61
In addition to its use in inducing the Indians to labor and
supply food, barter continued as the means of obtaining brazil- >•-
wood. The local Indians of Pernambuco were still the brazil¬
wood-cutters as late as 1546. By that year, twelve years after
the landing of the donatarios, the Portuguese brazilwood
traders had been so successful in inducing the Indians to cut
wood that the forest nearest to the town was twenty leagues
away. The donatario himself estimated that six or seven ship¬
loads of the wood had gone from Pernambuco within three
years.6* Further, he had heard that brazilwood contractors
planned to draw yet more wood, thirty thousand quintals of it,
from Brazil.63 All this logging for the shiploads in the past and
for the thirty thousand quintals in the future had been done
and was to be done by Indians. All the hundreds of logs had
been cut and carried by them in return for ironware, cloth, and
goods of various sorts.
While the barter system thus continued well after the arrival
of the donatarios, it nevertheless began to prove increasingly
unsatisfactory from the point of view of the Portuguese. The
case of Pernambuco in 1546 illustrates this point very clearly.
As has just been seen, the donatario, Duarte Coelho, planted
his settlement in the midst of the brazilwood country. Coelho’s
principal complaint to the King was that he did not have the
power to regulate the brazilwood trade within his captaincy.
Brazilwood was a royal monopoly and the contracts to cut it
were let out by the King. The agents of the contractors were
therefore not under his jurisdiction. The reason for Coelho’s
wishing to control the agents was the disturbance caused by
their fashion of getting brazilwood.” As has been seen, the
agents of the brazilwood contractors, using Indian labor, had
61 Later evidence, used retrospectively, suggests that food was often abundant
in Indian villages. See below, p. 111.
62 Calculated at the rate of five thousand logs to each shipload, between
thirty and thirty-five thousand logs would have been cut and carried to the
ships. This calculation uses the cargo of the " Bertoa ” as a standard. The
loads could very reasonably have been larger.
08 Duarte Coelho to D. Joao III, December 20, 1546, HCP, III, 314.
70 From Barter to Slavery

cut wood so extensively that now the closest supply was twenty
leagues from Olinda, the town. The wood was therefore both
difficult and dangerous to get. The agents, to get the wood,
importuned the Indians to go a-logging and promised them
many things in recompense. The result was that the Indians
had now become proud and avaricious and refused to accept
only the iron tools that had formerly been given them as pay.
The agents therefore were offering them beads, colored clothes,
and caps (carapu^as de pena), things that not even all the
Portuguese could afford. Worst of all, Indians were now being
given swords and muskets.64
The reason why Coelho found this bartering of more valu¬
able goods unsatisfactory is not obscure. Formerly, when the
Indians had been content with cheap articles, it had cost the
Portuguese but little to obtain food and labor from them.
Now, to obtain food and labor more expensive articles were
needed, so that food and labor were now not only dear but also
difficult to get. In effect, the refusal of the Indians to work
except for other and more valuable goods caused a rise in the
cost of living of the Portuguese. With this increase in the
cost of living went also a loss of prestige that was discon-
■ certing to the Portuguese. Formerly, the Portuguese had found
the Indians most willing to do anything for the trinkets that
they brought. Now the times were out of joint. The Indians
were free to supply food and labor in exchange for wares; they
were likewise free to refuse so to supply the Portuguese.
As the example of Pernambuco shows, the Indians could
well become satiated with what the Portuguese had to offer.
Then, the Portuguese themselves were no longer a wondrous
novelty to the Indians. Too many Portuguese of too many
different purposes were bidding against one another for the
favor of the Indians. The brazilwood contractors who wanted
one sort of labor outbid the settlers who wanted food and
another sort of labor. Even the dullest of Indians could afford
to be choice under such circumstances, and, from being unsatis¬
factory, the barter system began to prove inadequate as a means
by which the Portuguese could obtain what they wanted from
the natives.
61 ibid.
 i The Donatarios 71
[ Confronted with a barter system that was breaking down,'
the Portuguese, more than ever in need of labor, found an
alternative in enslavement, and, with the passage of time,
efforts at enslaving the Indians for plantation labor became
more and more likely. Slavery was no novelty to the Indians,
for, long before the time of the donatarios, a tribe victorious in
war would enslave some few captives of a vanquished tribe.68
It was likewise no novelty to the Portuguese, who, since the
days of Prince Henry the Navigator at Lagos, had been bring¬
ing slaves from Africa to Portugal.66 To be sure, the first
Portuguese attempts at enslavement were not intended to make
slaves for use in Brazil. The " Bertoa,” for instance, took
away thirty-five slaves from Cape Frio in 1511.67 Martim
Affonso de Sousa was given the right to send forty-eight native
slaves a year from Brazil to Portugal.68 Duarte Coelho and
other donatarios were allowed to send twenty-four, besides
using others to man the ships for the passage to Portugal.69
Evidence of the enslavement of Indians for use in Brazil is
scanty for the years before 1549. No mention was made of
the use of Indian slaves by the brazilwood traders, and, judging
from what is known of the trade, that use was unlikely. But
in 1545 Pedro de Goes had Indians at work on farms and also
had enough slaves and people for his mills.70 In the same
year, too, Sao Vicente, the captaincy of Martim Affonso de
Sousa, had more than three thousand slaves distributed among

es Paulo Merea, " A solugao tradicional da colonisagao do Brasil ” HCP III

ISO.
86 Gomes Eannes de Azurara, The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest
of Guinea, eds. C. R. Beazley and E. Prestage (Hakluyt Society, 1st series, XCV,
London, 1896), pp. 79-86.
67 See above. Chapter II, p. 34. No damage was done otherwise to the
other Indians, nor were any but these slaves to be carried off. Everything
seems to have been done to avoid irritating or alarming the natives. Bertoa,
p. 346.
68 Carta de doagdo of Martim Affonso de Sousa, DH, XIII, 144.
00 Carta de doa^ao of Duarte Coelho, HCP, III, 310. Pero do Campo
Tourinho, Vasco Fernandes Coutinho, and Jorge de Figueiredo Correa, whose
cartas I have seen, received rights similar to Coelho’s. {DH, XIII, 77, 99, 130,
165.) The stereotyped character of the cartas argues in favor of all having
received such rights.
70 Pedro de Goes to D. Joao III, printed by Augusto Carvalho, Apontamentos
para a historia da Capitania de S. Tome, p. 56; referred to by Merea, HCP,
III, 181.
72 From Barter to Slavery

six sugar mills and their plantations.'1 Later evidence used

retrospectively suggests the presence of Indian slaves in some
of the captaincies before 1549. In 1547, a great raid was made
on the Carijos Indians, many of whom were taken and sold in
various captaincies.72 Numbers of Indian slaves were reported
living in Porto Seguro,73 Pernambuco,74 and Sao Vicente.'5
Even when Indian slavery may not be proved, the existence
of the Portuguese slave traders certainly implies that enslave¬
ment went on. The raid on the Carijos is one example of their
work. They were also supplying Sao Vicente76 and Porto
Seguro.77 A settler, writing in 1550, had no doubt that the
cause of the Indian wars against all whites in Porto Seguro
was the assaults on the Indians by slave raiders from ships
ranging the coast,78 and the King, when he came to project a
single royal government for all Brazil, recognized slave raiding
as the principal cause of Indian wars.79
The alternative to Indian enslavement in Brazil was the im¬
portation of Negro slaves. But it must be noticed that there
is no direct evidence of Negro slavery in Brazil during the days
of the donatarios.80 Duarte Coelho had attempted to import
71 Luis de Goes to King, May 12, 1548, HCP, III, 256. There is no evidence
as to whether or not some of these slaves were Negroes. See below, note 80.
72 Nobrega, pp. 81-82.
73 Ibid., pp. 109-110. 74 Ibid., p. 125.
76 Afranio Peixoto, ed., Cartas avulsas de Jesuitas, 1550-1568 (" Publicagoes
da Academia Brasileira: Cartas Jesuiticas II,” Rio de Janeiro, 1931), PP- 60-61,
63. (Referred to hereafter as CA.)
7a CA, p. 63.
77 Nobrega, pp. 109-110. This case is complicated by the fact that Indians
were selling their children to the Portuguese, a practice that indicates a model
of behavior set by earlier slave traders.
78 Pedro Borges to D. Joao III, Porto Seguro, February 7, 1550, HCP, III,
268.
79 In his orders to Tome de Sousa, HCP, III, 348.
80 Capistrano de Abreu, O descobrimento do Brasil, pp. 79-80, 136, refers to
the slave trade during this period, a subject of which very little is known. He
cites Herrera (dec. I, liv. x, cap. xvi), and the case of the Bachelor of Cananea,
and adds, " Eis tudo que se sabe ” (p. 80). The government, he adds, favored
the slave trade; and the Portuguese and Spanish governments favored it more
than did the French. Later on he gives in the way of a conclusion the follow¬
ing proposition: " O Brasil exportou escravos antes de importa-los. A im-
portagao de Africanos e posterior a creagao das donatarios e anterior a creagao
do governo geral” (p. 136). Paulo Merea, "A solugao tradicional da colo-
 The Donatarios 73

some into Pernambuco in 1543, but, so far as is known, without

success 1 Pedro de Goes in 1545 was trying to get sixty Guinea
slaves for his sugar-works.82 Thus, it has been concluded that
Negro slaves were not many in Brazil until after the founda¬
tion of the royal government in 1549. Consequently, when
slavery is mentioned in Brazil during the period of the dona¬
tarios, it may be understood that the slaves were almost all
Indians and that their enslavement for use in Brazil was
established before 1549.83
Incitement by the French or involvement in intertribal wars
have both often been cited as causes for the wars against the
Portuguese that were so characteristic of the donatarial period.84
At the same time, the vigorous Portuguese attempts at enslav¬
ing the Indians for use as plantation labor must not be over-

nisagao do Brasil,” HCP, III, p. 182, says: " Nao resta diivida porem de que
neste primeiro periodo a classe escrava era principalmente representada pelos
indigenes e que so mais tarde, quando triunfaram as doutrinas favoraveis a
liberdade destes, ao mesmo tempo que se foram reconhecendo os seus defeitos
como agricultores, o recrutamentos da mao de obra enFre a populagao africana
se tornou de regra.” Further observations of his concerning the use of Negroes
in Portugal and in Portuguese vessels may be compared with the case of the
" Bertoa,” among whose crew, it will be recalled, were two Negroes. Cf.,
above, p. 37.
81 Duarte Coelho to D. Joao III, April 27, 1542, HCP, III, 314.
82 Pedro de Goes to Martim Ferreira, August 18, 1545, HCP, III, 262.
83 For a general discussion of slavery in Brazil, see Simonsen, I, Chapter VI,
" A mao de obra servil no periodo colonial.”
Yet another cause which may have been entirely as powerful is that sug¬
gested by Varnhagen, to which reference has already been made above, pp. 20-22.
His theory is that the disparity between the civilizations of the Portuguese and
Indians, combined with the lower nature of the Indians, led to mutual con¬
tempt and so to war. As an opinion, it need not be investigated here, though it
should not be altogether dismissed. In the history of the United States, for
instance, a frequent enough excuse for war against the North American Indians
or an explanation -of their hostile attitude was found by settlers in the
" orneriness ” of the Indians. Rich as such an interpretation is in subjective
overtones, it suggests just the situation that Varnhagen describes.
In addition to these varying interpretations, it must not be supposed that
there was any particular novelty in the Portuguese use of native allies. Much
of their success in India, it will be recalled, came from their use of the civil
war between the Hindus and the Mohammedans. Further, though he makes
no causal connection between Spanish and Portuguese, much of Friederici’s
thesis of the Spanish conquest of the Americas rests on the use by the Spaniards
of Indians allies. Georg Friederici, Der Cbarakter der Entdeckung und Ero-
berung Amerikas durch die Europder (2 vols., Stuttgart, 1925, 1936), passim
74 From Barter to Slavery
looked as a possible cause. Where the settlements were planted
in lands that at the moment were in the hands of the Tupi¬
nambas, the allies of the French, as in Bahia, Espirito Santo,
Parahyba do Sul, and Pernambuco, all three causes were present
In Bahia, the settlers built a town and a fortress on a point of
land separating the bay from the sea. They were at peace with
the local Indians, a tribe of the Tupinambas, during t e rst
years. They not only laid out their ro^as and plantations near
the town, but some settlers with more resources moved some
distance away and there built two mills. Then the Indians
arose, burned the mills and killed many men in them, destroyed
the plantations and drove the Portuguese into their fortifica¬
tions. The fighting, broken by truces, went on for seven or
eight years until the Portuguese retired or were killed.85 The
history of Espirito Santo and, especially, Parahyba do Sul
follows the same general lines. In Espirito Santo, the setilers
landed among Aymores, Goitacazes, and Tamoyos, all tribes of
the Tupinambas, and later allies of the French. They built
their town and, around it, seven or more mills with their planta¬
tions. While they were building, they were troubled by
skirmishes with the natives, but these shortly ended when many
of the Indians withdrew into the interior. Seeing all peaceful
and his mills and plantations increasing, the donatario returned
to Portugal to accumulate more resources for further expansion
of his captaincy. During his absence, the Indians returned,
destroyed the town and mills and drove the Portuguese off the
land to an island in the sea.86 In Parahyba, again among Tupi¬
nambas, the settlers set up their town and plantations in the
first few years of peace. The succeeding five or six years oi
Indian attack that followed, however, were too much for them,
despite occasional truces, and the donatario eventually aban-

85 Soares, Tratado, pp. 51-52. Cf. above, pp. 67-68, for other aspects of
this confused case. The Portuguese, in coming back to their town, were
wrecked on the island of Itaparica in the Bahia de Todos os Santos (Bay of All
Saints) and were there attacked by the Indians. A few Portuguese were left
who seem to have made yet another peace with Indians, or who may have lived
on among the Indians not as settlers but as squawmen. Sousa, Regimento,
HCP, III, 345 (see Chapter IV, note 1, for a description of this source).
86 Soares, Tratado, pp. 77-78. See also, above, p. 67.
 The Donatarios 75

cloned his settlement and took shelter with the survivors of

nearby Espirito Santo.87
Duarte Coelho planted his town in Pernambuco in what
seems to have been an enclave of Tupinambas. It is clear that
the Indians around Pernambuco were not united against the
Portuguese, for while some among them fought the settlers,88
others bartered food and labor with them.89 Despite distur¬
bances, the colony expanded, mainly, it would appear, because
Duarte Coelho had the resources with which to pay soldiers to
defend his settlers. In 1548, when he was hard pressed by
agressive Indians, he successfully resisted their attacks with the
aid of mercenary soldiers. He defended his immediate neigh¬
borhood and the outlying lands of his settlers, and his son
finished the work by driving the natives from the coast until
none were left within fifty leagues of the principal town.90
The cause of the constant attacks on Pernambuco is not clear.
They came during the first few years when the settlers were
laying out their towns and plantations. They also continued
with considerable vigor after the plantations and mills had
begun to operate. One cause given for them is that the hostile
Indians were allies of the French, who incited them to attack
both Pernambuco and the adjoining captaincy of Tamaraca.91
The other cause that has been given is that the Indians had
become hostile after the Portuguese had begun to enslave
them.92

87 Soares, Tratado, pp. 81-82.

83 Ibid,., p. 28; Hans Staden, Warhafftige Historia (Marburg, 1557), caps,
iii-iv.
89 See above, pp. 69-70.
90 Staden, caps, iii-iv; Soares, Tratado, p. 28.
91 Duarte Coelho to D. Joao III, April 27, 1542, HCP, III, 314. Of Coelho
in Pernambuco, Soares says that he " . . . teve grandes trabalhos de guerra com
o gentio e francezes que em sua companhia andavam. ...” (Soares, Tratado,
p. 28.) It seems clear that those attacks on Pernambuco that were incited by the
French formed part of the same movement by them against Tamaraca.
92 The source for this opinion is some of the interpretations of caput iii in
Hans Staden’s Warhafftige Historia, in which he recounts his services in Per¬
nambuco under Duarte Coelho in 1548. The versions of the text require careful
handling. According to some translations of caput iii, attempts had been made
by the Portuguese to enslave the Indians of Pernambuco and the wars had
followed. ''It so happened that the savages of the place had become rebel¬
lious against the Portuguese; they had not been so before, but they began to
76 From Barter to Slavery

On the basis of these four examples, a relation between

enslavement and wars (isolating these for the moment from
the question of French and Indian hostility and other matters)
may be suggested. It appears in the sequence in time of two
events: first, the laying out and working of the plantations,
as indicated by the operation of sugar mills; and, second, the
Indian attacks against the Portuguese and their mills and plan¬
tations. It may best be presented in an hypothesis.93 The
Portuguese laid out plantations and built mills with Indian
labor obtained by barter. At first, the Indians worked the
fields, too, on the same terms. Then the Indians acquired such
a store of Portuguese goods as to lose all incentive to work for
more. Faced with the ruin through lack of labor of those
plantations on which they depended for any future wealth, the
Portuguese began to enslave Indians for that labor. Retaliatory
wars followed.
A disbalance of the proportions of enslavement, French
incitement, and involvement in intertribal wars prevent this

be so on account of the Portuguese having enslaved them.” (Richard F. Burton,

ed., The Captivity of Hans Staden [Hakluyt Society, 1st series, LI, London,
1874]). Es begeb sich, dass die Wilden des Ortes gegen die Portugalesen
aufriihrerisch geworden waren, was sie vorder nicht gewesen; das hatte durch
die Schuld der Portugaleser angefangen.” (R. Lehmann-Nitsche, Hans Staden,
ein deutscher Landsknecht in der neuen Welt [Leipzig, 1929]). " Aconteceu
que os selvagens do logar se tinham revoltado contro os portugueses, o que
nunca antes tinham feito; mas que fizeram agora por terem sido escravisados.”
(HCP, III, 317.) All three translations are based on the Marburg 1557 edition,
but this text does not agree with them. In the Marburg 1557 edition the
passage in question reads:
So begab es sich das die wilden des orts waren auffriirisch worden gegen
die Portugalesen / welche sie vormals nicht waren / welches nun der Portu¬
galeser halben sich angefangen hatte. ...” The Marburg 1557 edition is
identical in this respect with the Frankfort 1557, which I have used. I am
indebted to Dr. Lawrence VCroth, of the John Carter Brown Library, for com¬
paring the texts with the Marburg 1557 edition that is in the John Carter Brown
Library.
In short, the logic of the situation in Pernambuco indicates that enslavement
had been going on. As a matter of accuracy, however, it must be noted that the
document does not support the statement.
93 This hypothesis is constructed despite the lack of direct evidence showing
the Indians doing regular plantation labor for barter. (Cf. Varnhagen, His-
toria geral, discussed above, p. 13.) Nevertheless, the indicated connection be¬
tween the spread of plantations and the beginning of the wars suggests that
until slavery was introduced, barter was used to obtain plantation labor.
 The Donatarios 77

hypothesis from applying equally well to the instances of the

remaining captaincies. Tamaraca, for instance, was planted in
a region in which brazilwood and hostile Tupinambas were
equally plentiful, and which was much frequented by the
French. Its incessant wars, which in time drove out the set¬
tlers, may reasonably be attributed, in the almost complete
absence of evidence, to the French.94
On the other hand, the settlers of Ilheos planted themselves
among Tupiniquins and, after some early skirmishes, lived in
peace with them.95 Those in Porto Seguro did much the same.
There too, fighting accompanied the setting up of the town
and mills, but was ended by a lasting peace. Not only did the
natives abide by the peace; from then on, they worked for
barter with the Portuguese, helping them lay out their rogas
and plantations.96 Martim Affonso’s captaincy of Sao Vicente,
likewise set among friendly Tupiniquins, resembles Ilheos and
Porto Seguro in that the local natives kept the peace. When
he landed on the island where he built his first town, he drove
the natives from it and had little trouble with them. This may
have been because they were poor-spirited,97 though one ex¬
planation may also be found in the fact that Martim Affonso
was able to defend his captaincy. Though he himself went
off to acquire fame in India, he provided mercenary soldiers to
help his successors.98
94 Pero Lopes de Sousa, the donatario of Tamaraca, ”... gastou alguns annos
e muitos mil cruzados com muitos trabalhos e perigos, em que se viu, assim no
mar pelejando com algumas naos francezas que encontrava (do que os francezes
nunca sahiram bem), como em terra em brigas que com elles teve de mistura
com os Pitiguares. ...” Soares, Tratado, p. 25.
96 Soares, Tratado, p. 57.
96 Ibid., pp. 67-68. These two, and some later settlements, were attacked and
all but entirely destroyed during the Tamoyo or Aymore wars of the 1560’s.
The French under Villegaignon, when retiring from Rio de Janeiro, stirred up
many allies of these tribes to attack. After the initial fighting, the Portuguese
were able to hold their own, but, as Soares says, the settlers, though possessed
of rich lands, were confined to their towns and immediate vicinity by the
roving hostile tribes.
97 Ibid., p. 106.
98 The best-known of the mercenaries was Hans Staden, who was a bom¬
bardier for the colony at Sao Vicente at the time of his capture and imprison¬
ment by the natives hostile to the Portuguese. His account suggests that a
considerable force was supported by the captaincy, and, in turn, suggests how
wealthy Martim Affonso was. His service in Sao Vicente followed his service
under Duarte Coelho in Pernambuco.
78 From Barter to Slavery

In these cases, the cause of the skirmishes of the early days

is not given, but possibly they, too, were caused by attempts
at enslavement. The cessation of the fighting, together with
the prosperity of the captaincies, suggest that another source of
labor had been found. The natives surrounding these cap¬
taincies were Tupiniquins, at war, in many cases, with Tupi¬
nambas. In Sao Vicente, for instance, fighting seems to have
gone on between the Tupiniquins of Sao Vicente and the
Tupinambas who were centered mainly around Guanabara Bay
(today Rio de Janeiro).99 In all likelihood, the Tupiniquins
were handing over to the Portuguese the Tupinamba captives
of their wars. In Porto Seguro about 1549, as an example,
some Indians were selling others to the Portuguese, though
there is in this instance no evidence of a war just concluded.100
The Carijos, though not Tupinambas, were still enemies of the
Tupiniquins and fell victims to the raids of 1547.101 In Sao
Vicente itself as late as 1554 Indian slaves were abundant.102
Taken altogether, the wars that were a concomitant of settle¬
ment in Brazil appear to have two relations to the settlers’
need of labor. In the first, some appear as retaliatory wars,
begun by natives against settlers who, faced with the need of
plantation labor and with the breakdown of the barter system,
resorted to slavemaking. In the second, others were intertribal
wars of the natives, participated in to a greater or less degree
by the Portuguese or French, which produced captives as slaves.
In all cases, the wars suggest more aggression against the
Indians for the purpose of obtaining labor than is demonstrable
by other evidence.
******

The donatarial settlers, adding plantations to the former

extractive exploitation of Brazil, introduced two changes into
the life of the Portuguese in Brazil. The first was that their

60 The Aymores and Tamoyos were the principal tribes of the Tupinambas in
this region. It is they who later aided the French under Villegaignon. Cf.
pp. 102, 107, 108, 120.
100 Nobrega, p. 81.
101 Ibid., pp. 81-82. See also, above, p. 72, note 72.
103 Staden, caps, xvii, xix, xxv, xxvi, xxix.
 The Donatarios 79
plantations fixed the Portuguese for the year around at certain
points of the coast. In this, the more or less permanent Portu-
guese settlements differ from the casual and transient contacts
with Brazil of the brazilwood traders and the coastguard. The
distribution of their settlements altered the older pattern, for
now, in addition to the brazilwood region with which the Portu¬
guese were already familiar, the settlement of Sao Vicente
began to place a value on the more southern reaches of the
coast. Together with the attempt at permanency went the
setting up of a number of decentralized local governments to
operate in Brazil. The donatarios, as lords in a system pat-
terned after that used in the settlement of the African islands,
ruled their settlers and were partially supported by them. The
settlers paid taxes to the lords and expected to make money
from their planting. Even so, neither the donatarios nor their
settlers were assured, in the difficult first days of colonization,
of even bare support. Going to Brazil to establish the colonies f
had taken, in all cases, much of the ready money of the dona¬
tarios, and defending their lands afterwards bankrupted some
among them. Thus it was necessary, in order to maintain
themselves and restore their losses, for them and their settlers /
to bring their plantations into production as soon as possible.
Their attempts to do this produced the second change, this
time in the barter relation between the settlers and the natives.
Following the pattern set by the brazilwood traders and the
coastguard, the settlers on plantations at first bartered with
natives, but they soon found barter inadequate to their needs.
That relation was no longer able as a matter of course to
conjure from the Indians such diverse desiderata as brazilwood,
labor, and food in return for Portuguese trinkets and tools. Its
breaking down was accompanied by efforts to enslave the
natives. The addition of slavery and plantations to the eco¬
nomic pattern demonstrated the practicability of agricultural
colonies in Brazil. It also led the Portuguese to begin, though
on an exceedingly small scale and in competition with the
numbers of cheap Indian slaves available, the importation of j
Negro slaves. While it had this effect, enslavement, in con- *
junction with incitement by the French and with involvement in
intertribal warfare, may also explain to some extent the wars
80 From Barter to Slavery

that were a characteristic of the period. The continuing wars,

which destroyed Tamaraca, Bahia, Espirito Santo, and Parahyba
do Sul, and kept Pernambuco in a state of siege, in turn estab¬
lished a rudimentary Indian policy, developed by later Portu¬
guese, consisting, at the time, of alliances of the Portuguese
with the Tupiniquins against the French and the Tupinambas.
In political affairs, these wars prevented the donatarios from
fulfilling the King’s purpose of peopling the land and pro¬
tecting it against the French. Ilheos and Porto Seguro, while
at peace, did not expand, and even the two strong captaincies
of Pernambuco and Sao Vicente, while able to crush hostile
natives, were not able to aid other and less successful colonies.
The general failure of the donatarios forced the King to con¬
sider the establishing of a royal government. Indeed, no better
statement of the end of the donatarial period exists than the
lament of a Portuguese who had taken refuge in Sao Vicente.
"... if Your Majesty does not succor these captaincies soon,”
Luis de Goes wrote to the King in 1548, ' not only will we
lose our lives and goods but Your Majesty will lose the

108 Luis de Goes to D. Joao III, May 12, 1548, HCP, III, 259.
 Chapter IV

THE ROYAL GOVERNMENT:

Tome de Sousa, the Jesuits, and the Barter System

Tpme de Sousa, as the first of the royal governors,1 came to

Brazil in 1549 just at the time when the barter system was
breaking down. The irresolute beginning under the donatarios
had prejudiced the whole matter of colonization, for while the
donatarial settlements had shown that agriculture was prac¬
ticable, they had also shown that disaster was possible. His (
principal task, given him by the King, was to re-establish the
ortuguese in Brazil and to defend their settlements against
the hostile Indians and the French. What he had to do was
thus clear and, in general, his methods of accomplishing his
purpose seemed equally clear. The struggles of the donatarios
had produced the framework of an Indian policy that he could
use. The barter system, though shaken, could still be made to
work under slightly altered circumstances. Particular applica¬
tion of his general methods was not easy and, to be sure, he
did not have equal success in using both. Nevertheless, what
success he had retrieved the losses of the donatarios and, in
encouraging the agriculture of the settlers, fixed the economic
pattern of Brazil for centuries to come.
Having been sent to assert the Portuguese possession of the
land, Sousa could not have been altogether encouraged by what
he saw in it on landing. The Portuguese at many points of the
coast had either been defeated altogether or were circumscribed
in their action by hostile natives and the French. Even when
increased by those whom he had brought with him, the num¬
ber of the Portuguese alone was small. All told, his army

1 For an account of the life and works of Tome de Sousa, see Pedro de
Azevedo, " A Instituigao do governo geral,” HCP, III, 327-383. The discussion
that follows of the King's policy and of Sousa’s execution of it is based on the
regimento given him by the King. These orders (referred to hereafter as
Sousa, Regimento) are printed in HCP, III, 345-349, and are summarized in
Fleiuss, Historia administrativa do Brasil, pp. 14-24.

81
 82 From Barter to Slavery

was the largest European force in Brazil, but, even when sup¬
ported by a few patrol ships, it was unequal to the task of
dominating thousands of square miles of land and coast. Aid
to offset his want of numbers was therefore imperative. Those
Indians of the Tupimquins who had helped the Portuguese
before seemed the most likely to help him in turn, but their
relations with the settlers remained uncertain. The economic
pressure of the plantations continued and, in some places,
increased, and, though the demand for labor was in some cases
being met by enslavement, even the friendly natives enjoyed no
security against the settlers. .
The policy that the King charged him to execute in Brazil
seemed, at first sight, to offer a partial solution to the problem
of winning Indian auxiliaries, for the King ordered him to
/M prohibit further enslavement of the natives by the settlers^ But,
at the same time, through the King’s instructions ran the urgent
command to build up the country, to extend Portuguese settle¬
ments, to make the land pay. The choice was difficult I
Sousa permitted the settlers to continue as they wished in
getting labor where they could, he would be faced with more
wars and with the destruction of the rest of the Portuguese or
of the rest of the Indians. If, on the other hand, he by some
means did succeed in stopping the settlers from slave-raiding
and slave-buying, he would also shut off their labor supply and
so endanger the operation of the plantations and mills. Further,
even if he only partially succeeded in checking the settlers, he
would nevertheless drive them to resist his authority in order
to obtain labor. He would then have the settlers on his hands
as active enemies as well as the Indians,
i Sousa’s solution was a compromise between the wishes and
'V' wants of the Indians, the settlers, and the King. First, he
ordered that only those Indians who had shown themselves
hostile to the Portuguese were to be assaulted, and, even then,
only by the governor’s army or by the settlers acting with his
license. The captives made in what came to be called " licit
(f wars” might then legitimately be enslaved. His order was
intended to win the loyalty and gratitude of the friendly
Indians as well as the support of the settlers, for it not only
protected the natives from indiscriminate slave-raiding: while
 The Royal Government 83

providing the means of getting plantation labor, it opened the

way for the systematic driving away of hostile tribes. Further,
by surrounding the Portuguese settlements, the friendly natives
could offer protection, as allies, against other Indians; and,
pacified and conciliated, they could more than offet the disad¬
vantage of small numbers under which the Portuguese labored.
But while Sousa arranged for licit war, he also recognized that
preserving the friendly Indians from molestation was not
enough. The Indians had food and wares and labor that the
Portuguese could use and the Portuguese had articles that they
desired. Consequently, Sousa’s second step was to regulate
the intercourse of the natives with the Portuguese, using, when
possible, barter as the method and the Jesuits as his agents.
A common desire to fix the wandering Indian tribes in
villages near the Portuguese settlements was the starting point!
of the work of the governor and the Jesuits. What Sousa
wished to do involved the use of the barter system more to
supply food than to supply labor, and in this his use differed
somewhat from that of his Portuguese predecessors. To make
easy the application of the system (as will be seen later), he
encouraged unenslaved Indians to remain close to the white
settlements. One way of doing this was to give the free Indians^
lands near the white settlements in return for aid that they had
given him in war.2 At the same time, he enjoined the settlers
from maltreating or alarming the natives, and required all
Portuguese to have his permission even to trade with them.3
In each village he gave honors and favors to a principal, an
Indian chief who was made responsible for the behavior of the
natives themselves. In addition, he sent out laymen of sobriety

2 Sousa, Regimento, HCP, III, 346; Anchieta, p. 380; CA, p. 186. These
villages are the ones referred to below, p. 91.
3 Sousa, Regimento, HCP, III, 347. An example of these licenses is an
" Alvara do Bispo para resgatar,” May 7, 1560, DH, XXXVI, 85-87. Many
of the regulations and orders issued by Sousa in Brazil have been printed in the
series DH, especially in vols. XIII (Foraes, doagoes, regimentos e mandados,
1534-1551); XIV (Mandados, provisoes, doaqoes, 1551-1625); XXXV (Pro-
vimentos seculares e ecclesiasticos, 1549-1559); XXXVI (Provimentos seculares
e ecclesiasticos, 1559-1577); XXXVII (Mandados, 1549-1552); XXXVIII
{Mandados, alvards, provisoes, sesmarias, 1549-1553). The series of mandados
is repeated in vols. XIII, XIV, XXXVII, and XXXVIII.
84 From Barter to Slavery

and discretion to watch over the relations of Indians and

settlers.4
The Jesuits5 had had purposes of their own in going with
Tome de Sousa to Brazil, quite aside from any use to which
they might have been put by the governor. Though they wished
to bring back to a more Christian life the white people of
Brazil who had taken up the habits of the natives among whom
they lived, their main task was the conversion of the heathen.
The Portuguese could be watched over in the towns and planta¬
tions where they lived. The natives, on the other hand, were
here in one place today and gone tomorrow. They would first
(have to be fixed in given localities, for Christian discipline and
worship could best be carried on in settlements and not by
solitary priests travelling the length of Brazil with wandering
tribes.6 The premise for the work of the Jesuits was, therefore,
the insistence that the Indians settle down. Thus, with dif¬
ferent ends in view, both the Jesuits and the governor agreed
that those ends could best be served by the one expedient of
settling free Indians as friends and neighbors close to the
Portuguese colonies.
Before proceeding to a study of the evidence of the economic
relations of the Indians under Tome de Sousa, a general state¬
ment at this point will indicate the main lines to be followed
through the detail. From 1549 to 1553, Tome de Sousa, with
the aid of the Jesuits, tried to develop peaceful relations with
the very large number of Indians around Bahia, his capital city.
Using the barter system, he and they could make available to

4 Nobrega, pp. 207-208; and, later, Duarte da Costa to D. Joao III, June 10,
1555, HCP, III, 378.
6 The indispensable work for the study of the Jesuits in Brazil is Serafim
Leite, S. J., Historia da Companhia de Jesus no Brasil (2 vols., Lisbon, Rio de
Janeiro, 1938). The same author’s Pdginas da Historia do Brasil (Sao Paulo,
1940) treats a number of special topics in the history of the Jesuits. For the
history of the order at the time, bearing particularly on Portugal and Brazil, see
Francisco Rodrigues, Historia da Companhia de Jesus na Assistencia de Portugal
(2 vols., Porto, 1931).
The attitude of the governor toward the Jesuits may be seen in his letter to
D. Joao III, June 1, 1553, HCP, III, 366.
6 Cf. Anchieta, pp. 316-317; Leite, Historia da Companhia, II, 42. Even as
late as 1557, Luiz de Gra complained that the Indians around Piratininga, in
Sao Vicente, were still fond of moving about. Serafim Leite, ed., Novas Cartas
Jesuiticas (Sao Paulo, 1940; hereafter referred to as Nov. C. Jes.), pp. 182-183.
 The Royal Government 85

the settlers on peaceful terms the ample food and labor of

these natives just when the colony was getting under wayj
Maintaining the barter system, as has just been said, meant to
him and to the Jesuits the maintenance of the free Indiansjihe
necessary people to produce the food and do the bartering.
While the work was going on in Bahia, the governor was/also
ranging the coast to inspect the state of the Portuguese outside
Bahiaj Whatever success Tome de Sousa had in attempting to
use the barter system around Bahia, his successor, Duarte da
Costa, had none in his rule from 1553 to 1557. The settlers^
wanted more labor for their plantations, something not hereto-
fore regularly obtainable by barter; and unable, or unwilling,
to get it by barter, they continued to make slaves. Not
interested in protecting the free Indians, Costa was also unable
to control the settlers and the churchmen, and let slip from
his hands the power of the governor. In the disorder of his
rule, in Bahia itself the Jesuits were forced to concentrate their
energies in protecting the free Indians. Elsewhere in Brazil,
his weak rule almost lost him the possession of parts of the
coast, for the French became more active, and, under Ville-
gaignon, landed and fortified themselves in Rio de Janeiro.
The lapse in the authority of the governor was repaired by
Men de Sa when he became governor in 1557. He remained
in office until 1572, and, a second Sousa in policy and prac¬
tice, strengthened his power by controlling his subjects. He
expelled the French from Rio de Janeiro and directed a war
against their allies, the Tamoyos and the Aymores. In Bahia
itself, where he found the number of free Indians already
decreasing at the time of his arrival, he restored for the moment
both the free Indians and the barter system by checking the
settlers and supporting the Jesuits. But during his administra¬
tion there occurred between (1562 and 1563 the miscarriage of a x-
licit war and the onset of epidemics that between them shortly
destroyed many of the Indians, free and slave, of Bahia: The
decrease in the number of free Indians forced a change in the
extent to which the barter system could be used around Bahia,
J
but it did not change the system itself. At times creaking and
giving way under the attacks of the settlers who wanted dis¬
ciplined labor, it was finally restored by the Jesuits and in the
86 From Barter to Slavery

decade of 1580 was once more the means by which the Portu¬
guese could obtain food and labor from free Indians.
To trace the establishment, decline, fall, and restoration of
the barter system in Bahia between 1549 and 1580, and to
observe it elsewhere in Brazil, it is necessary to examine not
only the professed policy but also the practices of the governor
and the Jesuits and the actions of the settlers and the Indians.
Most of the material to be examined here concerning the cen¬
tral government deals with the capital, Bahia, and the hap¬
penings in that city will accordingly stand out in relief. This
does not mean to say that Bahia therefore occupies a posi¬
tion entirely distinct from that of any other town in Brazil.
Because it was the seat of the governor and what happened
there came especially to his attention, material concerning the
royal administration tends to center in Bahia. It was not the
only populous center in Brazil, for north of it the vigorous
captaincy of Pernambuco had overcome the first difficulties of
hostile Indians and was advancing. Even by the end of the
century, Bahia had not been able to equal Pernambuco in
the quantity of sugar that it produced, in the wealth of its
inhabitants, or the splendor of its buildings. Far to the south,
too, Sao Vicente flourished, though it did not continue to do
so, to be sure, for sugar did not take kindly to its cooler climate.
Neglected to some extent by European merchants, this cap¬
taincy passed into a period of some obscurity until it began its
tremendous advances into the interior of the continent. Never¬
theless, it does not follow that the conclusions reached in the
case of Bahia are invalid elsewhere in Brazil. As will be seen,
the detailed example of Bahia is corroborated, allowing for
scantier information, by the history of the other colonies in
Brazil.
At the very start of his government in Bahia, Tome de Sousa
had to turn at once to barter and to the importation of food in
order to feed the settlers until crops could be harvested. He
laid out his town of Bahia, made up of a wall of wood and
plaster, a few houses on a few streets, a fort, and some wharves.
Living in the houses were the government officials, soldiers,
artisans, and merchants, with their dependents, servants, and
 The Royal Government 87
I I

slaves^ Outside the wall was the termo of the town, an area
six leagues in radius over which the municipal authorities had
jurisdiction.8. Outside the termo was what may be called the
region of Bahia to distinguish it from the town and the termo:
a strip of land between ten and twenty miles deep surrounding
the whole of the big and beautiful bay that gave its name to
the colony^ In the Bahia region were the settlers who took
lands and later laid out in them fazendas. Among their fields
they built their casas grandes9 and mills, veritable villages
under one roof, surrounded by the huts of the field- and mill-
slaves. Each fazenda was separated from the next and from
the town by the breadth of its fields and connected with them
by poor roads or by the splendid highway of the bay. The
fazendas, self-sufficient households, got their food from the
labor of slaves who worked on food-farms as well as on planta¬
tions. In having an independent source of food they were
quite distinct from the town. By them the barter system, as a
rule, was not needed as a means of getting food.
To help feed the people in the town itself, Sousa shortly
after landing began to import farinha. Acting through his
quartermaster, he ordered that certain sums be disbursed solely
for food.10 During September of 1549 he sent a ship to

7 Much about the people and buildings of Bahia may be learned from the
tnandados of Tome de Sousa, DH, XXXVII-XXXVIII, passim. See also letter
of Tome de Sousa to D. Joao III, July 18, 1551, HCP, III, 361-362. Cf.
Sousa, Tratado, pp. 128-130.
8 Sousa, Regimento, HCP, III, 346.
8 For the structure and operation of the life in the casas grandes there is noth¬
ing better than Gilberto Freyre, Casa grande e senzala (2d ed., Rio de Janeiro,
1936). For specific references to food-producing, cf. the description of the
engenho of Men de Sa, Soares, Tratado, pp. 159-160.
10 Importation of farinha:
Amount Imported
Date (in Alqueires) Where From
September
October
November
3,
8,
18,
1549-
1549 *
1549
_
392
costas de Pernambuco
Nova Lusitania * *
January 13, 1550 95 Sergipe
January 26, 1550 365 Tutuapara
March 20, 1550 117 Tutuapara
August 8, 1550 140.5 -***

* The ship went and came, but brought no farinha.

** Pernambuco. *** No place given.
88 From Barter to Slavery

trade for food,11 and in November he received from another

ship 392 alqueires12 of farinha from the colony at Pernam-
Amount Imported
Date (in Alqueires) Where From

October 4, 1550 35 Aldeia de Caram

October 18, 1550 117 Tutuapara
February 10, 1551 435 Tutuapara
8, 1551 _ ** * costa de Pernambuco
April
April 8, 1551 169 Tutuapara
October 12, 1551 383 Tutuapara
March 8, 1552 13 Povoagao de Pereira
April 30, 1552 320 Tutuapara
June 26, 1552 245 ***** Tutuapara
July 23, 1552 13.5 Povoagao de Pereira
August 16, 1552 470 Tutuapara
September 17, 1552 465 Tutuapara
October 10, 1552 301 Tutuapara
July 14, 1553 450 Tutuapara
July, 19 1553 17 Caramuru
* * * * Ship lost, with all wares, on outward journey.
***** Amount given in mandado as 241 sirios, a measure slightly larger
than an alqueire.
Annual totals:
Year No. of Shipments Total For Year
1549 * 1 392
1550 6 869.5
1551 3 987
1552 7 1,827.5
1553 * 2 467

. T . , 4,543 alqueires
* Less than a full year.
The above tables are based on DH, martdados. Cf. below, notes 11-24.
The ship of the first two loads paid for on April 8, 1551, is probably the one
mentioned by Tome de Sousa in his letter to the King, July 18, 1551. He
built the " Gualla ” and sent it to Pernambuco '*. . . e que em qualquer rio
que mais geytoso que achase carreguase de mantimentos e entrase pela rios
dentro . . this vessel, for want of news, he considered to have been lost.
HCP, III, 361. Cf. also the description of food-trading given by Francisco
Portocarrero in his letter to the King, April 20, 1555, HCP, III, 377: " . . . esto
soubemos por pesoas que as vyrao e de demtro desta Baya lhes vay resguate
porque este ano vyerao as suas pataxas a Tatuapara que e doze leguas desta
Baya e pedindo lheu como anima tenho dito follguamdo e fazendo gasto a Vossa
Alteza sem lhe fizer nenhum servigo Somente yrem a Tynhaem e a Peroaso e
Cyguaripe a resguatar galinhas porcos e pegas para quatro ou sinco pesoas,
somente elle mos nao quis dar pedindo lhe muitas vezes em secreto e em
pubryco.” Cf. also Sousa, Regimento, HCP, III, 345.
11 DH, XXXVII, 25-26.
12 The alqueire is a dry measure of 36.27 litres or 63.85 pints; 4,543
alqueires are 150,266.61 litres or 264,610.66 pints, or between 122 and 132 tons.
 The Royal Government 89

buco.13 During 1550, he imported from points near at hand a

total of 869.5 alqueires of farinha14 and, the following year, a
total of 987 alqueires,15 During 1552 imports doubled and
1,827.5 alqueires were received.16 The record for 1553 is incom
plete. It shows the receipt of 467 alqueires in July,17 which,
presumably, would be half the annual supply of between 800
and 900 alqueires.
The methods by which this food was acquired and the places
from which it was brought indicate the presence of free Indians
who were producing food. To be sure, in the total of twenty
shipments five form an exception, for they came from places
occupied by Portuguese. One came from Pernambuco,18 and
two from Povoagao de Pereira,19 near the town of Bahia and
within the bay. In 1550 and again in 1553 small loads came
from the settlement within the bay of the squawman Cara-
muru.20 Of the remaining fifteen shipments, twelve, or a total
of 3,837 alqueires, came from one place, Tutuapara, on the
coast about twelve leagues north of the town of Bahia.21 The
load from Pernambuco cost 21$3981/2 and was paid for with
money and with 68 wedges.22 The two loads from the
Povoagao cost 1$400 and 1$350. The first was paid for in

13 DH, XXXVII, 120. 14 Ibid., pp. 150, 157, 387, 390, 391, 392.
16 Ibid., pp. 223-224, 224, 348, 410-411.
16 Ibid., p. 420; DH, XXXVIII, 5-6, 14, 69, 81-82, 84-85, 231.
17 Ibid., pp. 167-168, 178.
18 Ibid., XXXVII, 120.
19 Ibid., p. 420; ibid., XXXVIII, 231. Cf. Soares, Tratado, pp. 126-127 for
a description of the Povoagao, which was the town of the donatario.
20 DH, XXXVIII, 178; ibid., XXXVII, 391. ”... dezesete alqueires de
farinha da terra feita entre os brancos para Sua Alteza. ...” (DH, XXXVIII,
178.) The load in 1550 came from Aldea de Caram; while identification is
not certain, this would seem to mean Caramuru. Caramuru's settlement was in
or near the Povoagao, for he is referred to as " diogo Alvares Caramuru,
morador na Povoagao de Pereira termo desta Cidade.” (Ibid.) There is no
evidence to show whether Caramuru simply traded the farinha or whether he
also grew it.
21 Ibid., XXXVII, 157, 224, 348, 387, 390, 410-411; XXXVIII, 5-6, 14,
69, 81-82, 84-85, 167-168. Tatuapara (variously spelled as Tutuapara, Tutua-
pera, etc.) is described in the Soares, Tratado, pp. 45-47. Of the remaining
three loads, one came from Sergipe, within the bay (DH, XXXVII, 150; cf.
map, HCP, III, 256, hors texte) ; one came from the costas de Pernambuco
(DH, XXXVII, 25-26) ; and one from an unspecified place (ibid., p. 392).
22 Ibid., p. 120.
90 From Barter to Slavery

money and the second in goods.23 The load bought from

Caramuru himself cost 1$700 and was paid for in goods.24
Thus, in dealing with other Portuguese, Sousa ordered payment
either in money or goods. The loads from Tutuapara, on the
other hand, were never paid for in money but only in goods.
An assortment of goods, almost always the same in every case,
was sent out to be exchanged against the farinha. Scythes,
pruning-hooks, hoes, knives, axes, hatchets, wedges, and fish¬
hooks were nearly always sent, and sometimes scissors and
combs as well.25
Though the governor relied on barter to obtain this farinha
from outside the town, he did not expect to depend on such
imports for food.26 For instance, the whole 4,142 alqueires
imported would, at the rate of one alqueire to one man for one
month,27 feed only ninety-two men for the forty-five months
under discussion (November, 1549—July, 1553). As the town
had at first a total population of about one thousand persons,
they obviously needed more than a hundred alqueires a month.
Consequently, it appears that the lots of food for which he
ordered payment could not have made up the whole source of
food for Bahia. Indeed, the disparity between the size of the
population and the quantities of food makes plain that the
imported food was supplementary to another supply, j
The ordinary way of supplying food to the people of Bahia
was in all likelihood a market at which they could obtain food
from the natives. Sousa was ordered by the King to set aside
one day a week, or more if necessary, as afinarket day. On this

23 " . . . treze alqueires de farinha da terra, que lhes foram comprados para
mantimento dos escravos, que Sua Alteza mandou a esta Cidade. . . . ” Ibid.,
XXXVII, 420; XXXVIII, 231.
24 Ibid., p. 178. The load from Aldea de Caram was paid for with "...
cinco machados, seis foices, cinco machadinhas, tres enxadas, dezeseis facas, tres
pentes, trezentos, e vinte anzoes de dois a real. ...” Ibid., XXXVII, 391.
25 See note 21.
20 He was to order the remaining donatarios to send "... toda ajuda que
poderem de jemte e mamtimentos e as mais cousas que na terra teverem das
que vos podem ser necessarias. ...” Further, Indians whom he had subjected
were to give " . . . em cada hum ano allguns mantimentos pera a jemte da
povoagao.” Sousa, Regimento, HCP, III, 345.
27 This is the basis for the calculations in the mandados, e. g., DH,
XXXVII, 1.
 The Royal Government 91

day the natives were to come to the Portuguese to sell them

what they had and to receive from the Portuguese in exchange
what they needed.2S While there is no direct evidence con¬
cerning the operation of this market, the existence of this
obvious means by which the Portuguese and Indians could
exchange goods against goods is implied by the orders and acts
of the governor. The Portuguese, for instance, were not to go
to the Indian villages to acquire goods there, but were to deal
with the natives only in the market.29 The Indians, likewise,
were forbidden to trade promiscuously with the town. The
only exception allowed was to the dwellers on the fazendas,
who were allowed to go only to the villages that were within
the limits of the lands of the fazendeiros. Other persons could
not deal with the villages except with the license of the
governor, and then only in exceptional circumstances.30
Two points must be considered about the opportunity and
desire of the natives to support such a market. As has been
mentioned, Sousa encouraged the natives to settle their villages
near the towm. To those who had helped him in war he gave
lands, placed as close as possible to the town, on which they
were to live.3!' He was also under orders to set to planting not
only the people whom he had brought with him but the

28 " E asy ordenareis que nas ditas vilas e povoagoes se faga em hum dia de
cada somana ou mais se vos parecerem necesarios feira a que os jemtios posao
vir vender o que teverem e quiserem e comprar o que ouverem mester e asy
ordenareys que os christaos nao vao as aldeas dos jemtios a tratar com eles
salvo os senhorios e jemte dos emjenhos porque estes poderao em todo o tempo
tratar com os jemtios das alldeas que estiverem nas terras e limites dos ditos
emjenhos e porem parecendo vos que fara inconveniente poderem todos os de
cada enjenho ter libardade pera tratarem com os ditos jentios segundo forma
deste capitolo e que sera milhor ordenar se que hua so pesoa em cada emjenho
o faga, asy se fara.
” E temdo allguns christaos necesidade de em allguns outros dias que nao
forem de feira comprar allguas cousas dos dytos jemtios o dirao ao capitao e ele
dara licenga pera as irem comprar quoamdo e omde lhe bem parecer.'’ Sousa,
Regimento, HGP, III, 347.
On the supervision of the market, cf. the following: " Ey por bem que com
os ditos capitaes e officiaes asenteis os pregos que vos parecer que onestamente
podem valer as mercadorias que na terra ouver e asy as que vao do reino e de
quaesquer outras partes pera terem seus pregos certos e onestos conforme a
calydade de cada terra e por eles se venderem trocarem e escaybarem.” Ibid.
29 Ibid. For violations of these orders, see notes 2 and 3 above.
so nid. 31 Ibid., pp. 345-346.
 92 From Barter to Slavery

natives as well,32 and, presumably, he carried this order out

shortly after landing. Thus, he accumulated around the town
a number of free Indians engaged in farming who were in a
position to bring food to the market. The second point is
reflected in the use of barter. The Indians, presumably, offered
food and the Portuguese offered tools and trinkets.33 The sug¬
gestion that barter was used is strengthened by a study of the
sort of goods that some of the Portuguese possessed who would
use the market. Some five hundred out of the whole popula¬
tion were paid by the governor for their services or labor during
V !the first forty-five months of his rule. Most of these were
persons under his authority, such as officials, soldiers, sailors,
and artisans working on the fortifications of the city. Alto¬
gether, some 1,201 payments were made to them between 1549
and 1553. Of the 1,201 payments, only 345, or between one-
third and one-quarter, were made in money. The rest, 856
payments, were in goods. These goods, when any specification
was given of their nature, were mainly hardware 34 and gen¬
erally similar to the sort of articles sent out of the city by the
governor when he was importing farinha from Tutuapara and
other points. From an analysis of the method of payment,35 it

33 As soon as the fort was completed, the regimento reads, " dareis ordem
como vos provejais de mantimentos da terra mandando os pramtar asy pela
jemte que levais como pela da terra e por qualquer outra maneira por que se
milhor poderem aver. ...” Ibid., p. 345.
33 " . . . faquas cunhas tizoiros contas da terra e anzalhes e allguas roupas e
podoes ffoses machados. ...” Letter of Dudrte de Lemos to D. Joao III,
July 14, 1550, HCP, III, 267.
34 In addition to the hardware itself, the poor people in Bahia were paid in
old iron " como ho que se vemde na feira em Lisboa. ...” Letter of Luiz
Dias to Miguel de Arruda in Lisbon, Bahia, July 13, 1551, Noticias anti gas do
Brasil 1531-1551, p. 18.
36 Between May 12, 1549, and August 30, 1553, the governor’s treasurer at
the governor’s order paid persons to wThom money was owing from April 1,
1549. Altogether, 1,427 separate transactions were recorded. Some were
simply records of transfers of stock from one official to another; 1,201 were
records of payment to persons for services rendered. Of these 1,201 payments,
only one-third were in money:
Payment in mercadoria. 700
Payment in res gate. 156
Payment in dinheiro. 345

1,201
The two terms, mercadoria and resgate, both signify wares or goods, though the
 The Royal Government 93

appears that these Portuguese at least were paid in goods that

they could offer to the Indians and that the Indians would be
likely to find desirable.
Though, so far as the evidence shows, jSousa used barter
mainly for the getting of food, it must not be supposed that he
abandoned the old use of it to obtain labor and materials.
Within two months after landing, he had bartered a quantity of
goods against wood for the building of his wall.36 The next
month he had bartered more goods against palm-leaves, more
wood, and other materials for building houses.37 The sort of
materials obtained—wood and palm-leaves—strongly suggests
that they were obtained from the local Indians. Barter was
continued, too, in the existing trade in brazilwood, though it
was now to be subject to supervision by the governor. He was
now to limit the amount and the value of the goods given by
the brazilwood contractors to the Indians,38 thus, as it were,
lowering what had been in the case of Pernambuco the high
price of brazilwood.
While Tome de Sousa thus used barter in his regulation of

first means, literally, merchandise, and the second barter. Sometimes they are
used synonymously (DH, XXXVII, 61). It is possible that to the governors
scribes the two terms had distinctly different meanings, though what those
meanings were it is impossible to say.
30 DH, XXXVII, 1. "vinte, e duas foices, seis machados, cinco duzias, e
dez pegas de espelhos, treze duzias, e quatro pegas de pentes, quarenta, e duas
facas de forma, e duas pegas de dez em tara, vinte e seis duzias e duas pegas de
tesouros, nove mil duzentos, e dez anzoes, e quatro enxadas, que tudo dispendeu
na compra da madeira, que se gastou na Cerca da Cidade. ...”
37 Ibid., pp. 15-16, 21. See also other examples, ibid., pp. 87, 170, 4l6,
432-433. "... noventa, e uma cunhas, setenta, e uma de quarenta reis pega, e
vinte de vinte reis pega, e trinta e sete facas de dez em tara, vinte, e nove
tesouros, vinte e quatro pentes, duas foices, setecentos anzoes de dois a real, e
duzentos, e cincoenta de quatro a real, cento, e noventa foradores, o que tudo
se gastou e dispendeu em tinhare na Caravella Leoa por compra de cento e
oitenta, e quatro rolos, que se resgataram para as Obras desta Cidade de
Salvador. ...” Ibid., p. 416.
38 Sousa Regimento, HCP, III, 349. "... pratiqueis a maneira que se deve
de ter pera que as pesoas a que asy tenho dado as ditas licengas posao aver o dito
paao com o menos prejuizo da terra que poder ser e lhes limiteis os pregos que
por ele ouverem de dar nas mercadorias que corerem na terra en luguar de
dinheiro e o que sobre yso se asemtar se sprevera no livro da camara pera dahy
em diamte se comprir.” This clause of the instructions is especially interesting
as indicating how the court in Portugal accepted the use of barter instead of
money in overseas colonies.
94 From Barter to Slavery

the intercourse of Portuguese and Indians immediately around

Bahia, the use of barter was also being continued elsewhere in
Brazil. ’ Though Martim Affonso de Sousa, the first donatario,
had spent only a few months in Sao Vicente, he had watched
its progress from Portugal and India and had sent ships and
people to aid it. Moreover, he had invited wealthy merchants
to invest in the captaincy, and they had accordingly built up
mills and great plantations.39 Because the captaincy was closely
surrounded by the Tupiniquins who were friendly to the set¬
tlers, its plantations and towns were free of attack, though far
off on its frontiers intertribal wars incited by the French con¬
tinued. Obtaining slave labor for the plantations was thus
made easy for the fazendeiros. They simply bartered with the
natives (as had previously been the case in Porto Seguro) to
obtain their captives in war as slaves.40 Whether slaves were
obtained in a similar fashion in Pernambuco is not clear.
Duarte Coelho, the donatario, and his son both vigorously de¬
fended their possessions, fighting often with the natives and
finally driving them away. Constant warfare could thus supply
many slaves whom the Portuguese could obtain directly by
capture instead of by barter. At the same time, the donatario’s
having finally discouraged his settlers from continuing to attack
the natives after their defeat,41 suggests the possibility that
barter might have been used to obtain slaves after the cessation
of fighting.
In addition to its use in acquiring slaves, the settlers in Sao
Vicente also used barter to supplement the food supply of the
captaincy. To feed their slaves, they imported farinha from
up the coast, where certain Tupinamba tribes, normally enemies
of the Portuguese, grew an abundance of mandioca. The
Portuguese went in well-armed ships, for the enmity between
the two people made the trade dangerous. They offered knives
and reaping-hooks (the similarity to the goods offered in pay-

88 Soares, Tratado, p. 106. For an illustration of investment in Brazil by

European capitalists, cf. a number of documents concerning the sugar business
in Sao Vicente later owned by the Schetz family of Antwerp from about 1565
to 1590. Alcibiades Furtado, ed., Os Schetz da capitania de S. Vicente (" Publi-
cagoes do archivo nacional,” XIV, Rio de Janeiro, 1914), pp. 9-31.
40 Soares, Tratado, p. 106; Staden, cap. xxv.
41 Nobrega, p. 124; cf. CA, p. 123. The date appears to be during 1551.
 The Royal Government 95

ment in Bahia may be noted), and received the farinha in

return.42
The resemblance between the use made of the Indians by
the Portuguese in Bahia and in Sao Vicente is obvious. In
both, barter played a circumscribed role. It was used to obtain
from free Indians food and materials, to some extent labor,
and, in the case of Sao Vicente, slaves as well. Whether it was
used in Bahia to obtain slaves is not shown by the evidence but
its use for this purpose is possible. It was not used to induce
the Indians to work on the plantations. Labor for the fields
and mills was obtained in both places by the enslavement of
the captives of war. In Bahia these captives were to be made
in the governor’s conquest of the Bahia regior. In Sao Vi¬
cente, on the other hand, the settlers obtained their slaves from
friendly Tupiniquins who were already at war with their
enemies.
1 Tome de Sousa thus had some appreciable success in
strengthening the barter system in Bahia in the face of his
settlers^j His success in abating slavery is less measurable. His
settlers, who were going to Brazil to lay out fazendas, could
well use Indian labor given in barter for building houses and
clearing fields, but, as the fate of the donatarios suggests, labor
given in barter was neither dependable nor sufficient; Conse¬
quently, the settlers preferred slave labor,; because it could be y
better disciplined. Their disregard, when possible, of Sousa’s
policy and practice of conciliating the Indians led to constant
friction between them and the governor. Even so, Sousa’s
conciliation of the natives was in the main successful. He con¬
solidated his position by building his town and fort of Bahia
and then began to use a few Tupiniquins around Bahia as his
allies against hostile natives.43
In further pacifying and conciliating the natives, Sousa had
the aid, as has been mentioned, of the Jesuits. Though the v
Jesuits eventually became the most vigorous of the supporters
of Men de Sa when he sought to re-establish the barter system,
it may not be assumed that they had a policy fixed in all its

42 Staden, cap. xxxviii.

48 Tome de Sousa to D. Joao III, July 18, 1551, HCP, III, 362.
96 From Barter to Slavery

details when they landed with Tome de Sousa. Their purpose

in going to Brazil was clear, but it appears that from 1549 to
1553 they were experimenting with methods of bringing this
aim to pass. At no time did they advocate that the Jesuits
themselves should acquire their goods from the Indians by
barter; that system they advocated for the use of the lay Portu¬
guese. Though burning with zeal and captained by the cour¬
ageous Nobrega, the Jesuits in Bahia in 1549 were only six.44
Few in numbers, their concern with economic matters was thus
not with their own support in mind. They watched their food
supply and sought to make it secure because of the many
dependents that they shortly acquired while working for the
conversion of the heathen.
To convert the heathen meant that the Indians had to know
what Christianity was, and this was impossible without educa¬
tion in doctrine. The difficulties in the way of a conscientious
effort to convert them were therefore great. The Jesuits and
the Indians had first to understand each other in language,
which meant that the Jesuits had to learn the Indian tongues or
the Indians had to learn Portuguese. With the difficulty of
language overcome, the Jesuits had next to carry on religious
instruction to prepare the natives for baptism. Education
involving language, being so necessarily antecedent to conver¬
sion, could not be a casual or haphazard affair. Nobrega had
the choice of two ways of reaching the Indians to educate them.
One was to go to them in their villages and to instruct them
there.45 The other was to require the natives of the countryside
to come to a fixed point at which the Jesuits could teach them
altogether. The sort of establishment at the fixed point de¬
pended on what kind of instruction was thought necessary. For
the general religious instruction of the natives, casds (houses)
were used, and to give some natives and Portuguese a more
complete education in other subjects as well the Jesuits estab¬
lished collegios (colleges). The clearest distinction between the
casas and the collegios is that the casa was for the instruction

** CA, p. 21. The number by 1585 had reached 142, counting the members
of the Company of all ranks.
*B See, for example, Joao de Azpilcueta Navarro, CA, pp. 49-53; Nobrega,
p. 73.
 The Royal Government 97

of the unbaptized, while the collegio was for the further edu¬
cation of Christians.46 Very shortly after landing in Bahia,
Nobrega had two hundred natives gathered around a casa,47
and later, when he established his first collegio, he had more
than twenty scholars there as well.48 Indian youths were
enrolled in the collegios from among the converts and were
taught both languages and ideas—the language to enable them
to live among the Portuguese, the ideas to prepare them to aid
the Jesuits in the further conversion of the heathen.49 Together
with them were some young Portuguese from Portugal and
Brazil, and, in time, some mestizos. Some among these
meninos (children, as the young collegians were called) were
in time permitted to enter the Company. They lived in the
collegios and, studying verbs with their Vulgate, investigated
under the rustling palm trees the intricacies of the Latin
tongue.50
Supporting the dependents in their casas and collegios was
no easy task for the JesuitsJ They themselves could easily be
fed by the alms of even a few settlers.61 The casas and collegios
were supported principally by the alms of the settlers,52 by
endowments,53 and by payments from the King, but even with
this diversity of sources of revenue, support was not certain.
The King gave things that were important—cattle, clothes,
slaves54—but not daily bread. For the important alms of food
for the dependents, the Jesuits relied on the settlers,55 though
this source, as the Jesuits saw it, was not very satisfactory.
When, for instance, the settlers came to dislike the moral pre¬
cepts and the preaching of the Jesuits, they declined, as a

46 Nobrega puts this distinction nicely. Nobrega, p. 137.

i7Ibid., p. 84.
48 Ibid., p. 126 (to D. Joao III).
49 Ibid., p. 129 (to the Padre provincial of Portugal).
60 The term meninos was occasionally applied to the students at the casas.
(Nobrega, pp. 126, 137; Anchieta, pp. 325-326.) By 1564, the students in the
collegio of Bahia had reached Book VI of Virgil's Aeneid. (CA, p. 428.)
61 Nobrega, pp. 139-140.
52 Ibid., P. 129; CA, p. 271.
63 Leite, Historia da Companbia, I, 107-186, Book II, " Meios de subsistence.”
64 Nobrega, pp. 129-130, 138, 150, 153; CA, pp. 338-339.
05 Nobrega, p. 130; Anchieta, p. 326.
98 From Barter to Slavery

mark of their hostility, to give alms/6 Nobrega was too com¬

mitted to the conversion of the heathen to allow the weakness
of one stone of his edifice to theaten the stability of the whole.
If the collegios and casas were to be instruments of conversion,
then they must be secure against failure. Therefore, very
shortly after establishing his first casa in 1549, he acquired a
small number of slaves to produce food for the two hundred
or so natives of the casa. 1 These were Indians, victims, perhaps,
of a licit war. Five were to plant food, and some among the
rest were to fish and hunt.57 When after founding his first
collegio between 1550 and 1551 he discovered how uncertain
were the alms of the settlers, he asked of the King some Guinea
slaves,58 and, with their labor, sustained his meninos.59
What the Jesuits were doing in Bahia, they also did in part
in other sections of Brazil. Shortly after arriving in Bahia,
some among them went to Sao Vicente. Others, between 1550
and 1553, went to Porto Seguro and Espirito Santo, and, later,
to Ilheos, Pernambuco, and Rio de Janeiro.60 They were ham¬
pered in Espirito Santo by the continual war between the
natives and the settlers and found their greatest number of
60 " Com os Christaos fazemos ca pouco, porque aos mais temos cerradas as
portas das confissoes, e de milagre achamos um, que seja capaz de absolvigao.
...” (Nobrega, p. 172.) Nobrega has another revealing comment when he
describes how the Jesuits sought to make clear to the settlers the distinction
between the Company and its meninos, in order to obtain from them alms for
the meninos: ”... nos vivemos de esmolas, e comemos pelas casas com os
criados desta gente principal, o que fazemos por que se nao escandalizem de
fazermos rogas e termos escravos, e para saberem que tudo e dos meninos.”
(Nobrega, p. 129-)
67 Ibid., p. 84.
68 Ibid., p. 126; Nov. C. fes., p. 25 (July 10, 1552). In time Nobrega
came to prefer Negro slaves to those of the land. His original ones having
almost all died, he wished more to replace them. Nobrega, in Nov. C. Jes., pp.
67-68 (September 2, 1557). Cf. also p. 83 (May 8, 1558).
60 Nobrega, pp. 129-130. Nobrega has a revealing description of the work
of the Guinea slaves that the King sent him: ” Alguns escravos destes, que fiz
mercar para a casa, sao femeas, as quaes eu casei com os machos e estao nas
rogas apartados todos em suas casas, e busquei um homem leigo, que delles
todos tem cuidado e os rege e governa, e nos com elles nao temos conta, e com
o homem nos entendemos, e os homem com elles. A causa por que se tomaram
femeas e porque d’outra maneira nao se pode ter rogas nesta terra, porque as
femeas fazem a farinha, e todo o principal servigo e trabalho 6 dellas; os
machos somente rocam, e pescam e cagam, e pouco mais; ...” Ibid., p. 139-
60 Anchieta, pp. 314-317.
 The Royal Government 99
converts among the native slaves of the settlers.61 In Pernam¬
buco, one of their principal difficulties was combating the arro¬
gance and pride of the planters, who now having won their
land from the natives, did not welcome criticism of their
morals^ In the interests of peace, the donatario had checked
the settlers in their slave raiding among the defeated natives;
he could not prevent their lapsing from European manners to a
degree that deeply impressed the Jesuits. In Pernambuco, as
in Espirito Santo, the Jesuits did what they could among the
free heathen, but they found them, though easy to convert,
difficult to maintain in a state of grace. To sustain the work
of conversion many more Jesuits would be needed. The bulk
of their work, accordingly, was with the slaves of the planters.62
The work of the Jesuits in the south was made considerably
easier than in Bahia by the peace that existed between the
natives and the settlers of Sao Vicente. To some extent, the
Jesuits kept the natives in their villages if much of the popula¬
tion of such villages had been converted. When they grouped
free Indians into newly set up parishes around a casa or a
collegio, therefore, they did so mainly to remove the new con¬
verts from the corrupting society of heathen Indians and the
settlers. They do not seem to have set up the parishes to pro¬
tect the natives against the slave raiding of the Portuguese, as
in Bahia. Indeed, aside from the desirability of segregating
the natives to maintain their conversion, the greatest difficulty
of the Jesuits was not the defense of the converts, but simply
getting food for them. Food at first was scarce, but what
there was was given as alms by the parents of the meninos and
by other natives.63
The hard times of the early days of the Jesuit establishments
in Bahia suggest what had been happening to the whole popu¬
lation of the town at the end of the government of Tome de
Sousa. Despite his prudent attempts to revitalize the barter
system and to induce the free Indians to aid the Portuguese,
the food supply of the town was neither ample nor assured.

01 CA, p. 88; Anchieta, p. 36 (referring to 1554).

62 Nobrega, pp. 114-126.
63 Ibid., pp. 1-52, passim-, Anchieta, pp. 314-317; CA, pp. 62, 65-67, 69, 139.
 100 From Barter to Slavery

'-That food was scarce seems clear from the fact that the food
alms received by the Jesuits were small, though some of the
scarcity in alms must be attributed to the wilful withholding of
them by recalcitrant settlers.6)' The explanation of the weak¬
ness of the food supply probably lies in the tendency of the
barter system to become progressively unsatisfactoryFurther,
the failure of barter would strike especially at the food supply
if the settlers had been relying on barter to obtain their food
from the natives in the native market.;
Nobrega, seeing the dependence of the Portuguese on the
Indians for food and being always intent on conversion, sug¬
gested a compromise. The free Indians of Bahia were now
divided, on the one hand, into a minority of Christians and
catechumens, and, on the other, a majority of heathen. No-
^brega’s suggestion was that the Portuguese be allowed to deal
only with converts and catechumens. Finding that heathendom
¥ meant exclusion from barter and that Christianity meant trinkets
and tools, then the heathen would seek conversion in order to
become both Christians and barterers of goods. As it was, the
Portuguese could have checked the ill manners of the refractory
heathen only by driving them away by force. To have done
this, Nobrega said, would have been to invite scarcity of food
and possible starvation.65 From his statement it appears that

64 Nobrega, pp. 134, 139, 141, 171-172.

66" Para mim tenho por averiguado que, si vierem moradores, que este
Gentio se senhoreara facilmente, e serao todos christaos, si vindo elles se
defender resgatar com os Gentios, permittindo-se somente resgatar com os Chris¬
taos e cathecumenos, que viverem apartados dos outros, debaixo da obediencia
de um pae que os reja, e de um Padre nosso que os doutrine, e desta opiniao
acho ca a todos os que da terra mais sabem, proque gente que nao tem Deus,
por quern morram, e tem tanta necessidade de resgate, sem o qual nao terao
vida, ainda que muito a salvo nos pudessem botar da terra, nao lhes convinha,
e si os obrigarem a serem christaos para poderem resgatar facilmente o fara, e
ja agora o fariam, si lh’o defendessem; e, porem, a necessidade que temos
delies e de seus servigos e mantimentos o nao permitte, e si vierem moradores,
que rompam a terra, escusarse-ha o trato com elles, e a terra do todo se
assegurara.” Nobrega, p. 135-136 (Bahia, 1552).
Cf., Nobrega in Nov. C. Jes., p. 43 (July 15, 1553) and especially p. 49,
describing a casa in Sao Vicente: " Este [Mateus Nogueira] mantem estes
meninos como seu trabalho, porque faz algum resgate com o qual compram
mantimento. Esta terra e muito pobre e nao se pode conversar este gentio sem
anzois e facas para os melhor atrair.”
 The Royal Government 101
Tarter was essential to the Portuguese and was, at least occa¬
sionally, strongly desired by the Indians. If the Indians were
sated with Portuguese things, their interest in barter was no
doubt slight, but when those things wore out or were con¬
sumed, their interest revived^ Yet the Indians were free to
provide the Portuguese with the food necessary to life or to
refuse to provide, and/this independence of the Indians made
the barter system increasingly unreliable as the population I
increased in the settlements along the coast.
 Chapter V

THE ROYAL GOVERNMENT:

Duarte da Costa, Men de Sa, and the Jesuits

Landing in J3ahia in 1553 just when the barter system was

weakening, Duarte da Costa did little to support it and much
to destroy it. He did not have Tome de Sousa’s ideal of con¬
ciliating the natives and having them live in peace with the
Portuguese. He ^disregarded just those persons among the
Portuguese who wished most for orderly life and antagonized
both the newly-sent Bishop of Brazil and the Jesuits. Becoming
involved in a squabble with the Bishop, he sought to gain the
support of some of the settlers by acquiescing in their indis¬
criminate slave raiding to get labor for their plantations. In
time, he became unable to control the settlers who became too
independent of his authority. The! looseness of his rule eventu¬
ally led to struggles among the Portuguese and between them
and the natives, and made disorder a commonplace in Bahia.
Elsewhere in Brazil, his authority was not respected. The
danger from the Indian wars that broke out in many places
was aggravated by the landing of the French in Rio de Janeiro.
Before the end of his term of office, the municipal officials of
Bahia were writing to the King in complaint and lamenting
how diff things were since the good old days of Tome de
Sousa.1;
1 Varnhagen commences his discussion of the government of Duarte da Costa
thus: "... voltemos a tratar de D. Duarte e do seu governo, contra o qual tudo
se conspirava. E possivel que D. Duarte chegasse ao Brasil animado de muitos
bons desejos; mas do seu governo nao o podemos nos deduzir.” (Historia
geral, I, 345.) Fleiuss summarizes his government from the detached point of
view of administrative history: " De facto, d. Duarte da Costa . . . havia se
revelado o typo de mao administrador. Por seu caracter impulsive e auctori-
tario comegara por indispor-se logo com os Jesuitas e o nosso primeiro Bispo,
cuja obra espiritual de catechese e de paz com o gentio desconheceu e destruiu
por oompleto, dando brago forte aos desatinos do filho e acabando por entregar
o paiz inerme a sanha dos Indios revoltados e dos piratas franceses que, desde
10 de novembro de 1555, se tinham estabelecido e fortificado no Rio de Janeiro,
alliados aos Tamoios, e onde se conservaram impavidos ate Duarte da Costa

102
 The Royal Government 103
The weakness of the barter system as a way of supplying
food to the city led some Portuguese in Bahia to seek a food
supply that was not controlled by the free Indians. The solu¬
tion was to use slave labor to produce food on ro^as. Retro¬
spective reading of evidence of a later date suggests how this
solution was brought about. A newly-arrived settler who could /
get a little land and ^our or six slaves could live in greater
ease than in Portugal.J Jdis slaves, Indians of the land, could,. ,
by their farming, fishing, and hunting, feed not only him but
themselves as well." But even a few slaves thus employed
couldjproduce more food than was needed by his household, so
that from simply supporting themselves the settlers passed to
selling their surplus. Such supplying of food would be no
novelty, for Tome de Sousa had bought farinha from a Portu¬
guese settler within the bay.3 The settlers sold the produce of
their (rocas to other settlers and even bartered it for the things
from Portugal that they needed.4 Such production of food¬
stuffs might lead to the sort of establishment that one Joao
Nogueira had in the Bahia region in the 1580’s. He owned a
large island in the bay that was too poor in soil for sugar
growing and on which the rivers were too small for the opera¬
tion of mills. On the land, which he let out to six or seven
farmers, he had not only food-farms (rogas de mantimentos)
but pigs and herds of cattle as well.5
The working of the ro^as commercially began to make the
free Indians dispensable as food producers. It also made the
freedom of all Indians more precarious,(for now the Portu¬
guese would begin to demand slaves to work their ro^as as
well as their fazendas. Further, if the two—ro^as and fazen-

deixar o Governo em 1558.” (Historia administrative.t, p. 25.) Cf. letters of

Bishop of Sao Salvador to D. Joao III, April 11, 1554, HCP, III, 368-369; of
officials of the camara of Sao Salvador to same, December 15, 1556, HCP, III,
381; and letters of D. Duarte da Costa to D. Joao III, April 8, 1555 and
May 20, 1555, HCP, III, 373, 375-376. For his quarrel with the Bishop, see
Varnhagen, Historia geral, I, 345-349.
2 Pero de Magalhaes Gandavo, Tratado da terra do Brasil e historia da
Provincia Santa Cruz, p. 40.
3 See above, p. 89, note 19. * Gandavo, pp. 38-39, 40.
6 Soares, Tratado, p. 148. At another point in the bay, Cajaiba island was
occupied by ten or twelve sugar-fields and food-farms (rogas de mantimentos).
Ibid., p. 160.
104 From Barter to Slavery

das—now worked against the personal freedom of the Indians,

they also worked against their continuing fo hold land near
the Portuguese settlementsSome settlers began to consider
taking over the existing rogas of the free Indians to operate
them with their own slaves, while the fazendeiros, more in¬
terested in sugar planting, found the rogas of the Indians an
obstruction to the extension of their fazendas. These ele¬
ments of danger to the Indians were precipitated in the Bahia
region in a brief war in 1555. The Portuguese at one outlying
mill had been extending their sugar-lands until they had come
to the rogas of the free Indians. Then, because even these
rogas were being taken, the Indians attacked the mill in the
spring of 1555. As the story was reported to Duarte da Costa
and by him to the King, the natives burst on the mill, " saying
that the land was theirs and for the Portuguese to get out of
the mill.” The attack was short-lived, despite its first energy,
and the Indians were soon driven back by troops sent out from
the city.6 The governor, in agreeing to a peace to end this
struggle, increased both the number of slaves of the settlers
and the food of the city. He burned the villages of the
attackers and enslaved, as victims of a licit war, those Indians
who were left alive. Those who could fled to the woods to
escape him. Then, though the Portuguese were aware that
only some of the Indians had risen and that others had been
entirely out of the fighting, he accepted indemnities of slaves,
cattle, and other goods from all Indian villages alike in the
Bahia region.7
The subjected free Indians did not break the treaty that the
governor had made, but they lived in a peace that was unhappy
and uneasy. Resistance to the Portuguese they saw to be out of
the question and they did what they could to avoid drawing on
themselves the further anger of the settlers. Not only did they
send word to the city to make plain that they had had no part
in the fighting and should not be attacked; in fear and trem¬
bling they also offered to watch and protect the fields of the
Portuguese against other Indians.8 But even such submission
6 Duarte da Costa to D. Joao III, June 10, 1555, HCP, III, 377.
7 Ibid., p. 378.
8 Ibid.
 The Royal Government 105

was not enough._ The Portuguese, with their superior strength,

continued to threaten them and to take from them their ro^as.9
Further, some settlers considered themselves justified because
of news that ritual anthropophagy had been revived among the
natives as a sequel of intertribal wars.10
During this troubled time the Jesuits were less concerned
with the maintenance of the barter system than with the defense
of the Indians as subjects for conversion. / They saw with alarm
the recrudescence of man-eating, for that practice was one
against which they had preached most vehemently.11] They
also saw with (dismay the continued land-grabbing by the Portu¬
guese.1^ What they needed was a method of supervising the
Indians that would enable them not only to spread the faith
and combat heathen practices; they needed one that would also
defend the lives and liberty of the Indians and preserve them
from spiritual contamination by the settlers. No control was
possible if the Indians, under the threats of the settlers, were
abandoning their villages and dispersing themselves through
the woods. To keep the natives around Bahia despite the set¬
tlers and to keep them there as Christians, the Jesuits began to
experiment with a system of Indian parishes. Up to this time,
they had gone to the Indians as they had found them and had
gone teaching and preaching from village to village. Now they
began to collect the converts from villages throughout the
Bahia region into three parishes (igrejas) .1S By the end of
1557, the Indians in these parishes were moved to two new
ones expressly set aside for them near the city: Sao Sebastiao,
near the town, and Nossa Senhora, on the Rio Vermelho. The
work of conversion was to go on outside these parishes and the
life in them was to be an inducement for the heathen to
embrace Christianity. In this attempt, the Jesuits had the
doubtful support of Duarte da Costa.14 Principally interested
6 Ibid.; CA, p. 171; Nobrega, p. 161, as late as 1557.
10 CA, p. 171; Nobrega, p. 161, as late as 1557.
11 Starting with Nobrega’s letter of August 10, 1549, the letters of the
Jesuits abound in references to this Indian custom. Nobrega, pp. 90-91.
12 Nobrega, p. 161; CA, p. 180.
18 The term igreja means, strictly speaking, church. In the sense in which
the Jesuits use it, it is more clearly translated as parish.
14 Nobrega, pp. 202-203.
106 From Barter to Slavery

in the suppression of anthropophagy, he saw the advantage of

tranquillizing the natives and gave the Jesuits aid in their going
among the heathen. He did not, however, conciliate the In¬
dians or protect them against the settlers. Summoning Indian
principaes to him to order them to desist from their abominable
practice, he threatened them with death or expulsion from their
lands if they disobeyed his order.15
(The effect on the barter system of the continuing disturbances
is shown in a sort of food strike that took place in 155Tj The
Portuguese to get food from the free Indians were now using
threats instead of wares in barter.^. In Lent of that year, the
local Indians simply refused to plant any crop for the next
harvest. j They saw no reason to add a growing crop to the
very land that the settlers threatened to take from them. How
dependent the settlers were on the food of the free Indians is
indicated by the scarcity that began in Bahia. The natives had
enough food stored up for their own use. When this hidden
reserve was exhausted the natives, too, went hungry.16 Faced
with a complete breakdown in the barter system, the Portu¬
guese very shortly sought another way of getting food.; They
invaded the Indian communities and took from the natives
their ro^alTi By threats and trickery they drove the Indians
away,17 and, it is reasonable to think, set slaves to work at once
in their stead. Even so, they did not gain enough food. The
disturbance among the Indians made life dangerous for the
Portuguese except on lands directly around the city.18 Short
of slaves for their work, they were anxious, in need, and dis-

15 CA, p. 171. 16 Nobrega, p. 161.

11 Ibid., p. 172; CA, p. 180. The trouble did not cease at this point. In
the early'part of 1558, shortage of food continued in Bahia, not because of
bad weather or want of land, according to Nobrega, but because of want of
people to tend the fields. Nobrega, in Nov. C. Jes., p. 79 (May 8, 1558).
18 Men de Sa reported that when he landed in Bahia in 1557, he found
" toda a terra de guerra sem os homens ouzarem fazer suas fazendas senao ao
redor da cidade. ...” “ Instrument dos servigos de Mem de Sa,” published
in ” Documentos de Mem de Sa,” Annaes da Bibliotheca Nacional do Rio de
Janeiro, XXVII (1905), p, 131; hereafter referred to as " Instrument.”
This document is a record of his services drawn up by Men de Sa and wit¬
nessed and corroborated by several citizens of Bahia. He presented it to the
King as a basis for recompense that he claimed. On the point of the dis¬
turbances in Bahia, cf. CA, p. 185, and Nobrega, in Nov. C. Jes., p. 76 (May
8, 1558).
 The Royal Government 107

contented. Among the Portuguese only the Jesuits continued

their work among the Christian natives. They converted a
few more, and, maintaining their parishes, brought to them,
despite the attacks of the settlers, their new communicants and
catechumens.19
WherpMen de Sa came as governor at the end of 15 5 7,20 he
found not only the disturbances in Bahia just sketched, but also
others elsewhere on the coast of Brazil. His work, accordingly,
fell into two parts. The one was the restoration of the
authority of the governor in and around the capital of Bahia.
The other was the defense of the Portuguese settlements out¬
side Bahia against the French and hostile natives, who, centered
in Rio de Janeiro, now began to strike north and south along
the coast. Though the two phases of his work for the most
part ran concurrently the pacification of Bahia was begun first,
because he was not able f6 move against the French until after
his position in his capital had been consolidated. The part
played in that consolidation by his relations with the Indians
will here be discussed in detail from the time of his coming to
the end of 1563. A discussion of his work outside Bahia,
despite the concurrence in time, will be deferred to the end of
this chapter.
Men de Sa s first work in Bahia was to bring the settlers and
the Indians to obey him. He prohibited gambling,2JJ a practice
leading to quarrels and corrupt morals; he wound up long
and vexatious lawsuits that had been breeding ill will in the
town;22 and he put the vagabonds and the lazy to work.2^
Then, looking outside the town, he punished those settlers who
had been going illicitly among the Indians.2^! To stop the
random disturbances among the Indians, he defeated them in a

10 Anchieta, p. 350; CA, pp. 181, 182, 183. It is interesting to note that the
Camara of Bahia was considering the use of the repartimiento of Indians on
the model of Peru and the Antilles. Men de Sa refused to agree to any such
scheme, on the grounds that most of the Portuguese did not merit its bene¬
fits. Nobrega proposed such a repartimiento of the services of the incorrigible
Indians (Nobrega, in Nov. C. Jes., pp. 77, 81-82 {May 8, 1558]), though he,
too, thought many of the Portuguese unfit masters.
20 He left Lisbon at the end of April, 1557, and was eight months at sea.
" Instrumento,” p. 120. Cf. Nobrega, p. 178, note 66.
21 " Instrumento,” p. 130. a3 CA, p. 188.
23 Ibid.; Nobrega, pp. 2 0 3-2 04 . 24 Ibid.
 108 From Barter to Slavery

short, sharp war, made peace, and arranged their government

for them. He had ready at hand in the Jesuit parishes the
means for controlling the Christian natives. Now he -'ordered
the beaten Indians to become Christians and to group them¬
selves into a few large villages under the direction of the
Jesuits.25j He foresaw that he would need Indian allies in his
projected war against the other natives and against the French,
so he supported the Jesuits when he saw how successful they
were in making the Christian natives their friends and his.-6
With Men de Sa now in control of his government, the
Jesuits in Bahia embarked on their plan to protect the free
Christian Indians and to maintain the barter system. Between
[ 1557 and 1562 they brought together into eleven parishes what
they estimated to be thirty-four thousand Indians.27J Theyiex-
25 " Instrumento,” pp. 131-132; Nobrega, in Nov. C. Jes., p. 80 (May 8,
1558).
20 Ibid., p. 226.
2r The following table of the parishes has been constructed mainly from the
information about them in Anchieta and CA. The figures, both of distance and
of population, are based on the estimates used by the Jesuits. For more specific
references, see below, notes 30 to 47.

Date Parish Site No. of Natives

-1557 S. Sebastiao perto desta cidade

Nossa Senhora Rio Vermelho (1-1/2 leagues
from Bahia

1557 Sao Paulo (ex-N. S.) 1 league from Bahia 2,000

Santiago (ex-S. Seb.) Piraja (3 leagues from Bahia) 4,000
Sao Joao 1 league from Santiago (4
from Bahia) depopulated
Espirito Santo Rio de Joane (5 leagues from
Bahia) 4,000

1560 S. Antonio Rembe (9 leagues from Bahia) 2,000 plus

1561 Sao Joao (re-establ.) 6 leagues from Bahia 4,000

S. Cruz Taparica island (3 leagues
from Bahia)

Total (Lent 1561) 16,000

1561 Bom Jesus Tutuapara (12 leagues from
Bahia) 4,000
S. Pedro 10 leagues beyond Bom Jesus
1 8,000
S. Andre 10 leagues beyond S. Pedro
| together
(30 leagues from Bahia)
S. Miguel Taperagua 2,000
N. S. d’Assumpgao Tapepigtarrga 4,000
1562 11 parishes Total 34,000
 The Royal Government 109

hibited ty the free heathens the advantages of life in the

parishes. Though some settlers still attacked even the parishes,
the burden of that attack fell on the heathens.28 As parish 1
Christians, the natives would enjoy protection from the Portu¬
guese, an assured supply of food, and the religious experiences
that they had come to covetff When the parishes were well
established, then they would also be able to barter with the
Portuguese under the supervision of the Jesuits.
As has been seen, the Jesuits had established two parishes
during the reign of Duarte da Costa: one, Sao Sebastiao, close
to the city,30 and the other, Nossa Senhora, on the Rio Ver-
melho, a league and a half from the city.31 By Men de Sa’s
order, the population of Nossa Senhora and that of several
other villages that had been close to the city were now put
together and called Sao Paulo.32 Sao Sebastiao was enlarged
by a similar addition of small villages and became Santiago.33
By the same method of agglomeration, the parish of Sao
Joao was set up one league beyond the new Santiago,34 and
that of Espirito Santo was planted on the Rio de Joane.35 On
Palm Sunday of 1560, the Indians deserted Sao Joao.36 During
Lent of 1561, it was refounded six leagues from Bahia.37 At
the same time, the parish of Santa Cruz was set up on one of
the islands of the bay.38 In June a parish was set up at Tutua-

Serafim Leite divides the setting up of the parishes (aldeamento) into four
phases: ” 1556, mais a titulo de ensaio; a de 1558-59, solida e prometedora; a
de 1560-61, intensiva mas sem condigoes estaveis; e a reconstituigao definitiva,
depois de epidemia e fome de 1563-1564.” Leite, Historia da Companhia, II, 59.
28 Nobrega, pp. 205-206, 209.
29 Leite’s point of view is suggested in his words: " O aldeamento dos Indios
obedeceu a um pensamento de catequeses: facilitar e garantir o bom exito dela,
tudo vem estudado para fixar cagadores e Pescadores andarilhos.” Leite, His¬
toria da Companhia, II, 42.
30 Anchieta, p. 350.
31 Ibid.; CA, pp. 158, 170.
32Anchieta, pp. 350, 353; CA, pp. 200-201, 231 note 133, 225, 258-259;
Nobrega, in Nov. C. Jes., pp. 86-87.
33 Anchieta, p. 350; CA, pp. 183, 231 note 133, 266.
34 Anchieta, p. 350.
36 Anchieta, p. 350; CA, pp. 231 note 133, 225, 264-265.
36 CA, p. 265.
37 Anchieta, pp. 352-353; CA, p. 300, which gives the distance as seven or
eight leagues.
38 Anchieta, pp. 352, 387 note 472; CA, pp. 306, 328.
 110 From Barter to Slavery

para, twelve leagues from Bahia, and named Bom Jesus.39 Ten
leagues beyond Bom Jesus the parish of Sao Pedro was estab¬
lished,40 and, twenty leagues beyond Bom Jesus, yet another
one, Sao Andre, was planned and later occupied.41 In 1562
two more parishes were added, Sao Miguel, in Taperagua,42
and Nossa Senhora d’Assumpgao in Tapepigtanga.43 By 1562,
the Jesuits thus had eleven parishes laid out, eight within the
termo of Bahia and three beyond, with about thirty-four
thousand natives under their watch.44
One parish was very like the next in its operation. The
governor allowed each parish to choose its municipal officials
From its members and to copy many of the forms of municipal
government of the Portuguese.45^ Then the /Jesuits assumed
charge of the religious and economic life of the parishA Intro¬
ducing a discipline of hours into the lives of natives who had
1 formerly measured time by seasons, they now made agriculture
and religious practice the two centers of the parish. Grouping
so many Indians made essential a careful regulation of planting
and harvesting to insure a supply of food. Religious instruc¬
tion, itself a reason for the founding of the parishes, now was
accommodated to the agricultural routine. At daybreak, the
ringing of a bell called together the unmarried girls, as well as
many that were married. When their religious instruction
was over, they were sent off to do their work and to spin and

39 Anchieta, pp. 353, 387 note 473; CA, pp. 233 note 136, 296, 315-316.
40 Anchieta, pp. 354, 387 note 475; CA, p. 233 note 136.
41 Anchieta, pp. 354, 387 note 476; CA, p. 348, which gives the distance as
eight leagues from Sao Pedro.
42 Anchieta, pp. 354, 388 note 478.
43 Anchieta, pp. 354, 388 note 479; CA, p. 325. 44 Anchieta, p. 354.
45 " Nao escrevi a vosa alteza particularmente as diligencias que aviam de
fazer os homens que mandava pedir para vilas que fazia do gentio por serem
muitas agora por menos despesa e pela necesidade que avia deles ordenei de
fazer hum meirinho dos do gentio em cada vila por que folgam eles muito co
estas onrras e contentasse com pouco com os vestirem cadanno e as molheres
huma camisa dalgodam bastara e isto deve vosa altesa mandar que lhe dem.
" Tambem mandei fazer tronco em cada vila e pelourinho por lhes mostrar
que tern tudo o que os cristaos tern e para o meirinho meter os mocjos no
tronco quando fogem da escola e para outros casos leves com autoridade (de)
quern os ensina e resida na vila (eles) sao muito contentes e recebem milhor o
castigo que nos.” Men de Sa to D. Sebastiao, March 31, 1560, Documentos de
Mem de Sa, p. 228.
 The Royal Government Ill

weave cloth. Then the schoolboys were summoned and in¬

structed for two hours or so in reading, writing, and doctrine.
Their turn ended, they, too, were sent off to fish and hunt to
provide food for the community. During the afternoon and
before sundown, the remaining adults were summoned, again
by the ringing of a bell. They were instructed at that time of
day because teaching them before noon would have interfered
with their work on the rogas.46
It does not follow from the fact of the thorough supervision
of the parishes that the agricultural methods of the Indians
were improveckj Certainly, no direct evidence shows that in
this early time the Jesuits even so much as introduced the use
of tools new to the Indians. Nevertheless the suspicion re¬
mains that some change, some improvement in method, did
take place, for changes in other details of Indian life are
known. ' In the parishes themselves, the natives learned spin¬
ning and weaving of cloth under the direction of the Jesuits.
The amount that they produced was not large, but in one case
was beginning to be enough to clothe the people of the parish.47
In the matter of producing food, it is arguable that an ample
supply of food reflected improved methods, but this is by
no means certain. While it is true that, according to a visitor
in 1587, food never seemed scarce in the parishes^; it must
also be remembered that some Indians had been producing
40 Of the many references to parish life in the Jesuit letters, perhaps the best
is the one by Ruy Pereira, writing from Bahia in 1560: " A ordem da doutrina
e esta na egreja: em amanhecendo tangem todos os dias, vem as mogas solteiras,
posto que muitas casadas vem com ellas, sem as constrangerem; acabada sua
doutrina, vem os mogos da escola, aonde estao em ler e escrever e doutrina duas
horas pouco mais ou menos, e as mogas com as mais mulheres se vao despois
de sua doutrina a fazer os seus servigos, e a fiar para terem panno com que se
cubram, das quaes muitas andam ja cobertas. E os mogos acabada a escola, se
vao a pescar pera se manterem, porque e esta gente tao pouco solicito do cras-
tino, que o dia que o nao cagam nao o tern ordinariamente. A tarde, antes do
sol posto, porque os homens e mulheres ja tem vindo de seus trabalhos ou
pescaria, tangem-lhes e vem a doutrina os que no logar se acham, posto que
nisto nao punhamos rigor, antes vem os que querem, e com elles vem tambem
as mogas por sua vontade a doutrina. Esta divisao se fez porque os grandes
estivessem pola menha mais desoccupados pera seus trabalhos (os quaes sao ate
o meio-dia, uma ou duas horas despois) ; e porque como sao mais rudes, se
tratasse com elles mais em especial.” CA, p. 261.
47 CA, p. 261.
48 Fernao Cardim, Tratados da terra e gente do Brasil, eds. Baptista Caetano,
Capistrano de Abreu, and Rodolpho Garcia (Rio de Janeiro, 1925), p. 294.
 112 From Barter to Slavery

an abundance of food long before the establishment of the

parishes.49 It is difficult to say whether an ample supply of
food in the parishes came from improved methods of farming
or simply from the Indians’ being kept persistently at work by
the Jesuits. The improvidence and laziness of the natives had
always been remarked by the Jesuits and they had worked to
eradicate both. Thus, discipline alone might be a sufficient
explanation.50
Precisely when the use of barter increased between the food-
supplying parish Indians and the Portuguese is not clear in the
evidence. At the same time, that increase seems likely shortly
after the setting up of the parishes, in view of the direct evi¬
dence describing barter by the natives both before and after the
period from 1557 to 1562. That likelihood is strengthened
when the policy of Nobrega is taken into account, together with
his practice and that of his successors, in choosing sites for the
parishes. Nobrega, it will be recalled, aware of the appeal of
Portuguese goods to the Indians, had suggested to the King
that the Portuguese be allowed to barter only with free Chris¬
tian Indians. By limiting the ways of getting Portuguese goods,
he sought to encourage the heathen to adopt Christianity. In
considering the location of the parishes, it must be remembered
/ that the consistent practice of the Jesuits was to segregate the
V J Christian Indians from the settlers in order to prevent the one
S from corrupting the other. Such a practice argues that the
parishes would be planted in places more or less inaccessible to
the settlers, whereas, in fact, the parishes were placed where
communication with the city was easy. Of the eleven parishes,
seven were within twelve leagues of the city.51 All these were
connected with the city by roads—no splendid highways, but
serviceable paths through the woods.52 Some parishes, placed

*°CA, pp. 119, 123, 266.

60 Such seems to have been the case during one instance of a shortage of food
in Bahia in 1559, when the colegio remained well provided. Nobrega in Nov.
C. Jes., pp. 89-90 (July 30, 1559).
61 See above, note 27.
C2 Despite the many complaints by the Jesuits of the state of the roads there
is no evidence that the Indians found them difficult or impassable. Cf., for
evidence of the poor roads, CA, pp. 165, 311, 321, 315. But bad roads were
no obstacle to Portuguese pilgrims going to a jubilee in Sao Paulo outside
Bahia, ibid., pp. 418-419-
 The Royal Government 113

near the water, were even more readily reached, because of the
greater ease of transport by water. The sites of the first four
parishes (Sao Paulo, Santiago, Sao Joao and Espirito Santo),
chosen with an eye to the convenience of the Indians in their
farming and fishing, were on the shore.63 Bom Jesus was also
on the sea, in Tutuapara,64 the region whence Tome de Sousa
had often imported farinha. Santa Cruz was on Taparica island
within the bay itself,55 and Sao Miguel was on Tinhare island,
off the coast to the south of Bahia.56 In short, however the
Jesuits wished to segregate them, nearly all the parishes were
placed near the city where roads and boats and easy transporta¬
tion could encourage the exchange of goods.
But to describe the parishes as they were working in 1562
does not mean to say that they produced all the food of Bahia.
Other groups of farmers were also producing food. The set¬
tlers who were already selling food from slave-tilled rogas were
still in existence, and, presumably, increasing their holdings.
Free Indians who were heathens and therefore not in the
parishes were in all probability still farming on such ro^as as
had been left them by the land-grabbing settlers. Despite the
unsatisfactory character of barter, they no doubt still brought
food to the weekly market of the town. Thus, the possibility
of competition by other farmers must be considered when esti¬
mating the importance of the parishes as producers of food.
The protection of the free Indians and the attempt to insure
them both their freedom and a part in the economic life of
Bahia suffered a severe set-back in the years 1562 and 1563.
Until 1562, Men de Sa had succeeded (so he boasted and so
the Jesuits said, also) in bringing peace and prosperity to Bahia.
" The need that there was for the natives” 67 had led him to
conciliate them and to aid the Jesuits in converting them.
Those who became Christians were his faithful allies, even
when he was fighting against other and heathen Indians around
the bay. So confident was he of their fidelity that he could take

63 Anchieta, pp. 350-351, 352-353.

64 Ibid., p. 353.
65 Ibid., p. 352. 50 Ibid., p. 354.
67 Men de Sa to D. Sebastiao, March 31, 1560, Documentos de Mem de Sd,
p. 228.
114 From Barter to Slavery

two thousand of them as his allies with only three hundred

Portuguese to control them and to lead the fight.68 These allies
were with him when he went in 1560 to expel the French and
their native allies from Rio de Janeiro/9 But pacifying the
Indians was only one of his achievements. In the more settled
conditions of his rule, he 'encouraged the settlers to lay out
cottonfields and to expand their fazendas,60 and built a sugar-
mill for their use.^J The revenue of the region, a reflection of
the sugar trade, had fallen low under Duarte da Costa,. Under
Men de Sa, it was now being measured in thousands of
cruzadosJr
The times of peace, however, were only a prelude to the
extinction of much of the Indian population, partly by war and
struggles with the settlers, partly by the accident of disease/
The’expansion of the fazendas was forcing the settlers to look
for more labor. They needed more hands than they had, and
they apparently could not or did not wish to make up the
deficiency by importing Negro slaves from Africa^63 There¬
fore, governor or no governor, the fazendeiros were once more
beginning to look for their labor among the natives. Perhaps
moved by the need of keeping the control of the slave trade in
his hands and away from the settlers, and bearing in mind his
right to enslave the victims of a licit war,I Men de Sa in 1562
resolved on a war against the Caaete Indians^ This tribe, living
north of the city on the Sao Francisco river,'had been hostile to
the Portuguese.J They were heathens, and besides, had mur¬
dered the first Bishop of Brazil in 1556.64j Combining ^(possi¬
bility of slave-making with the military advantages of cleaning

38 " Instrumento,” pp. 133-134.

69 Men de Sa to D. Sebastiao, March 21, 1560, Documentos de Mem de Sa,
p. 226. Cf. Anchieta, pp. 157-160, for his use of these allies in Rio.
60 Testimony of Sebastiao Alvarez, " Instrumento,” p. 149.
61 Ibid., p. 132. Cf. Nobrega, p. 204.
62 " Instrumento,” p. 132.
63 The great importation of Negro slaves into Brazil took place after 1570.
Even so, the numbers in Bahia in the decade of 1580 were not large; three
thousand to four thousand was the estimate of Cardim. See below, p. 131.
61 The Bishop’s ship, homeward bound after the Bishop had been driven out
of Bahia by Duarte da Costa, was wrecked in the Caaete country off the Sao
Francisco. The Bishop and the rest were then killed by the natives, June 16,
1556. Anchieta, p. 309; Varnhagen, Historia geral, I, 345-349.
 The Royal Government 115

out a hostile tribe, he proclaimed them to be outlaws and liable

to enslavement as victims of a licit war.5^
The pleasure with which the settlers heard of the governor’s
proclamation was not shared by the Jesuits. The fathers could
approve of the punishment of the killers of the Bishop, but
they saw a danger to their parishes. Though the main strength
of the Caaetes was around the Sao Francisco, a great number
was scattered through the countryside between there and Bahia.
The Jesuits had gathered up many of them among other Indians
and had settled them mainly in their parishes to the north of
the city, such as Bom Jesus. They therefore wished the gov¬
ernor to distinguish between the far-off Caaetes and those who
were Christians in the parishes. War against all Caaetes could
only mean that those in the parishes as well would be legitimate
prey.66 . / .
The governor’s proclamation was! disastrous to the parish
Indians both from his point of view and from that of the
Jesuits. The white 'settlers, taking advantage of the proclama¬
tion,'Fulfilled the fears of the Jesuits by taking slaves among
all Indians. Alleging that they were taking Caaetes as per¬
mitted, they attacked even the parishes.67 The Jesuits soon
found that such slave raiding had a; powerful effect in depopu¬
lating the parishes because of the terror with which it filled
the remaining natives. The Indians saw the Portuguese carry/
off their wives, children, brothers, and sisters; they saw them
attack villages and fall on groups of Indians on the roads.
Having no effective or immediate recourse in law or arms
against the Portuguese, (the Indians simply vanished into the
woods.68 The parishes of Santo Antonio, Bom Jesus, Sao
Pedro, and Sao Andre had at this time twelve thousand souls.
Very shortly after the Indians began to retire, barely one thou¬
sand were left with the Jesuits.69 In such losses among the
66 Anchieta, p. 355; CA, p. 358. Nobrega had been in favor of such a war
much earlier. Nobrega, in Nov. C. Jes., p, 77 (May 8, 1558).
66 Anchieta, pp. 355-356. 07 Ibid. Ibid., p. 356.
09 Anchieta gives this figure of 12,000. Previously he had given 14,000 as
the population of these four. Santo Antonio, nine leagues from Bahia, was
the closest to the city and had more than 2,000. The other three parishes all
lay north of Tutuapara and ten leagues from one another. Bom Jesus had 4,000
and the other two 8,000 between them, a total of 12,000. Anchieta, p. 356.
116 From Barter to Slavery

natives, the governor saw that his scheme, whatever its original
purpose, had gone beyond his intention, and, accordingly, he
revoked the sentence against the Caaetes.70
Prohibited from carrying on their slave raiding by that revo¬
cation, the Portuguese took other means of getting slaves.
They sought out such Indians as they could find hiding in the
woods and gave them wares in barter if they would deliver
their fellows to the settlers.71 This the Indians seemed per¬
fectly willing to do as a price for their own freedom, for the
drain continued on the Indians in the parishes and elsewhere.
To counteract this violation, this perverted use of barter, the
governor ordered confiscated all Indian slaves that he could
determine to have been bartered by other natives to the Portu¬
guese, and sent them to live in the Jesuit parishes.72
If the year 1562 thus began dismally enough for the gov¬
ernor, the Jesuits, and the parish Indians, it closed in worse
disorder. In/jj>62 and 1563 two great epidemics of smallpox
broke out in Bahia.73 The first lasted about' three months,
' ^ ^

70 Ibid., pp. 356-357. 71 Ibid., p. 357.

72Ibid., p. 356. See Appendix for the attitude of Nobrega in this
circumstance.
73 Anchieta, pp. 356-359; CA, pp. 382-392. A comparison of the two
accounts cited of the epidemics leads to the conclusion that Anchieta confused
some details of the two. Valle, in speaking of the Indians after the epidemic
of 1563, says: " . . . se fez ferrar para que, vendo-o que engeitava ja ferrado, o
tomasse.” (CA, p. 383.) Anchieta, in speaking of the epidemic of 1562, says
(p. 356): " . . . e outras diziam, que Ihes pusessem ferretes, que queriam ser
escravos: .... Anchieta, p. 357, has Nossa Senhora at Tapepigtanga com¬
pletely abandoned by the Indians in 1562. Valle has it still occupied in 1563,
because in that year he reports 1,080 deaths there. For the detail of the
epidemics, that in the account by Valle, who saw much himself, is to be pre¬
ferred. It must not be supposed that these two epidemics were the only ones
in Brazil. In 1552, in Pernambuco, some disorder marked by a cough broke
out among the Indians of which many died. (CA, p. 119.) In 1558, a sick¬
ness began in the jungle and on the coast near Rio de Janeiro and then spread
north to Espirito Santo. In Espirito Santo it struck both Negroes and Indians
and carried off a sixth among them, some with pleurisy and some with bloody
fluxes. By the end of this epidemic, 600 Negroes alone were dead among the
slaves. (CA, pp. 207-209.) A sickness in Sao Paulo, near Bahia, in 1560,
struck its victims with pains, " que posto que fosse um mancebo mui robusto,
em 4 ou 8 dias lhe tirava a vida.” The Jesuits fought the sickness with bleed¬
ing, oranges, and sugar, but to no avail. Between one and four of the sick died
every day and the total mortality was between 60 and 80 for the village of
250 Indians. (CA, pp. 258-259.)
 The Royal Government 117

apparently only around Bahia itself. The second began very

late in 1562 in Ilheos, with the arrival there of a ship from
Portugal, and soon spread along the coast and into the interior.
It reached Bahia in January of 1563. In both epidemics the
Portuguese seem to have been immune to the disease, for no
deaths among them are mentioned. The epidemic of 1562,'
lasting about three months, ’.killed, according to some, thirty
thousand Negroes and Indians.74 For want of evidence, no
estimate is possible of the deaths in the second epidemic. One
Jesuit estimated that one-third of the Indians alone would die,
and in some instances calculated that of twenty sick twelve
would die. In Nossa Senhora d’Assumpcao, one thousand and
eighty deaths were reported out of a population of somewhat
less than four thousand, a proportion of roughly one in four.75
The second epidemic, therefore, may be calculated as killing
between one-fourth and three-fifths of the survivors of the
epidemic of 1562.
Sickness and death among the parish Indians were quickly
(followed by demoralization that destroyed their ability to carry
on their farming. With (farming interrupted, famine shortly
followed. Those Indians who could walk simply abandoned
their rogas and wandered through the woods eating fruits,
roots, and other such foods as they could casually find.76 Then,
from having no one to tend the ro<;as, those who remained in
the villages next had no one to tend the sick, " not even some¬
one who could go to the fountain for a gourdful of water.”
Finally, when the sickness was at its height, they had no one
even to bury the dead.77
The'famine that followed the epidemics contributed in a
curious way to the continued enslavement of the natives,/ Some
/Indians seem to have got the notion that the Portuguese had
'-food and they came around the houses and fazendas to get
food there—so miserable that many did not have the heart to
send them awaydj But the /settlers wanted slaves to replace
those who had died, so that next the Indians offered themselves

74 Anchieta, p. 356.
7BC/f, pp. 384-385. ” CA, p. 383.
74 Anchieta, p. 358. 78 CA> P- 383.
 118 From Barter to Slavery

as slaves in return for a dish of farinha.79 When some settlers

refused to take them as slaves, they came back with irons on
their limbs, hoping that the settlers would take them thus.80
| Besides this voluntary submission, [many were being captured
by other Indians, who sold them to the settlers.81; The Portu¬
guese, despite the governor’s prohibition of buying slaves under
such circumstances, bought them readily enough, and even went
slave hunting themselves in the woods around Bahia.82
By the end of 1563, the disturbances of the Caaete war, the
'slave buying and slave raiding of the Portuguese, and the
epidemics and famine had largely reduced the Indian popula¬
tion. That population had once been estimated at eighty thou¬
sand.81 While vagueness in the accounts of the mortality
prevents any precise statement, it is possible that only nine or
ten thousand natives were left in the vicinity of Bahia.84 The

78 Anchieta, p. 356.
80 CA, p. 383; Anchieta, p. 357. 81 Anchieta, p. 357.
a*Ibid., pp. 357-358. To this may be added Anchieta’s description of slave
raiding: "... os Portuguezes vao ao sertao, e enganam esta gente, dizendo-lhe
que se venham com eles pera o mar, e que estarao em suas aldeias, como la
estao em sua terra, e que seriam seus vizinhos. Os Indios, crendo que e
verdade, vem-se com eles, e os Portuguezes por se os Indios nao arrependeram
lhes desmancham logo todas suas rogas, e assim os trazem, e chegando ao mar,
os repartem entre si; uns levam as mulheres, outros os maridos, outros os
filhos, os vendem; outros Portuguezes no sertao abalam os Indios, dizendo que
os trazem para as igrejas dos Padres, e com isto se abalam de suas terras, porque
ja sabem por todo o sertao, que somente gente que esta nas igrejas, onde os
Padres residem, tem liberdade, que toda a mais e cativa, e chegou a cousa a
tanto que um Portugues, indo ao sertao buscar gente, fez a coroa como clerigo,
e com isto dizia que era o Padre, que os ia buscar para as igrejas.” (Anchieta,
p. 378.) Between 1564 and 1578, the Jesuits obtained from the crown
decrees regulating the slave trade and setting free and sending to the parishes
all Indians taken illegally. The documents were included by Anchieta in his
" Informagao dos primeiros aldeiamentos ” and appear in Anchieta, pp. 359-
371. See also below, Appendix.
88 Ibid., pp. 377-378.
84 The figure of 9,000-10,000 is reached by a series of guesses based on
general statements by the Jesuits. Anchieta’s figure of 80,000 included Chris¬
tians and heathens together. A mortality of 30,000 distributed indiscriminately
among these leaves 50,000 survivors of the first epidemic. Further figures for
the destruction of the Indians refer only to the parish Indians. Before the
epidemics, 12,000 natives fled from the parishes in fear of the Portuguese. As
the population of the parishes had been calculated at 40,000 maximum, 28,000
would be left. If deaths are calculated at one-third, the 28,000 would be re¬
duced to 18,000 or 19,000 survivors. How. many among this demoralized
 The Royal Government 119

principal damage to the parishes took place north of the city,

toward the Caaete country. Depopulation, begun by settlers
who claimed to be taking only Caaetes and completed by
famine, was particularly severe in this region. Though most
of the loss was in the northern parishes, all suffered. By the
end of 1563, the Jesuits had five parishes left out of the eleven
that they had set up in 1562. In time, these five shrank to
four.85
While conditions in Bahia worked toward the destruction of
the native population, conditions in some other parts of Brazil
made the tenure of the Portuguese precarious. To examine the
events outside Bahia, some retrogression in time from the year
1563 is for the moment necessary. Though weakness of Duarte
da Costa’s rule permitted the French to install themselves in
Rio, their occupation in itself would not have threatened the
Portuguese possession of more than the immediate vicinity.
The danger lay in their alliance with a whole family of Tupi-
namba tribes, among others the Goyanazes, the Goitacazes, and
the warlike Aymores and Tamoyos. Driven back in some in¬
stances by the Portuguese, these hostile tribes were now em¬
boldened by French support to attack the Portuguese once
more. During the first ten years of Men de Sa’s rule, they

remainder fled into the interior and how many died of famine it is impossible
to say. If the guess is made that half fled, the total of survivors left around
Bahia would be between 9,000 and 10,000. This final figure is, of course,
entirely tentative, and would be altered if it was possible to discover how many
hundreds or thousands of natives the Portuguese then took as slaves.
85 The famine was most marked between Rio Itapocuru and Rio Real, the
region of the northern parishes. (Anchieta, pp. 377-378.) The ruin of the
free Indians around Bahia was completed during the early part of 1584. In
rapid succession they suffered epidemics of what may have been malign tertian
and once more, smallpox. (CA, p. 405.) In effect, these last two only
finished the work of the epidemics of 1562 and 1563. Antonio Blasquez has a
sophisticated picture of the effect of such mortality on the morale of the
natives: " Neste tempo nao se viam entre elles nem ouviam os bailes e regosijos
costumados, tudo era choro e tristeza, vendose uns sem paes, outros sem filhos,
e muitas viuvas sem maridos, de maneira que, quern os via neste seu desemparo,
recordando-se do tempo passado, e quao muitos eram entao e quao pouco
agora e r0mo dantes tinham o que comer e ao presente mornam de fome, e
como’antes viviam com liberdade e se viam, alem de sua misena, a cada passo
assaltados e captivos a forga, pelos Christaos; considerada e ruminada esta subita
mudanga, nao podiam deixar de lastimar-se e chorar muitas lagnmas de
compaixao.” (CA, p. 405.)
120 From Barter to Slavery

began to strike out in all directions from Rio. Pushing south,

some bands of the allies menaced Sao Vicente until they were
repelled by the settlers and Tupiniquin allies. Moving north¬
ward, others passed through the region of Parahyba, whence
the settlers had earlier been driven, and laid siege to Espirito
Santo, where the donatario and some settlers still maintained
themselves on an island offshore. They attacked Ilheos and
Porto Seguro and were reported soon in the environs of Bahia
itself.
Against the ravages of the Tupinambas, Men de Sa at first
made no headway until after he had to some degree pacified
the Bahia region. Then, he undertook the reconquest of Brazil.
His north, except for an occasional raid from such tribes as the
Caaetes, was protected by the vigorous captaincy of Pernam¬
buco, so that when he acted he could move freely toward the
south. Sending first to Espirito Santo in response to a plea
from Vasco Fernandes Coutinho, the donatario, his forces after
an initial failure beat back the native attackers. Then he
attacked the Tupinambas in succession on the island of Tapa-
rica (near Bahia) and in Rio de Janeiro, despite the distraction
of a Tupiniquin raid on Ilheos. The first attack on Rio in
1560 disposed of the French, but not of their Tamoyo and
Aymore allies, for within the next six years he had to return
to Rio as well as to Espirito Santo and Porto Seguro. To
maintain the success of the second attack on Rio, he planted
there the Cidade de Sao Sebastiao to act as a fort against the
foe. With the extreme south still held by Sao Vicente, with
the centre held by Sao Sebastiao, and with Pernambuco and
Bahia strong in the north, the power of the Tupinambas to
attack generally was broken. They made a last attack on
Espirito Santo, and, after the end of his term of office, on
Parahyba, but both attacks were crushed. Men de Sa re-estab¬
lished Espirito Santo and encouraged settlers to go there. That
done, the coast was from then on indeed in Portuguese hands.86
8® For the work of Men de Sa, cf. his " Instruments,” pp. 13-26. The attack
on Parahyba does not figure in it, of course, but may be found in Frei Vicente
do Salvador, Historia do Brasil, 1500-1627, ed. Capistrano de Abreu (Sao
Paulo, 1918), pp. 222-373. The importance of the Parahyba war, fought by
the rump of the French settlers who had been driven from Rio, must not be
judged from the amount of space given it by Frei Vicente.
 The Royal Government 121

A recital of the campaigns of his forces, though necessary to

show the final Portuguese assertion of their ownership of
Brazil, does not explain altogether the struggles on the coast.
Incitement by the French, to be sure, largely explains the out¬
break of the wars and the diffusion of attack from the central
French position in Rio. The case of one captaincy does not fit
the pattern of a war incited by the French.
Up to the time of attack, Ilheos had been flourishing. Peace¬
ful because surrounded by Tupiniquins, it had been favored by
Portuguese capitalists, who invested in sugar mills in it. In
time the sons of the donatario sold it to one Lucas Giraldes,
who put so much money into it that it came to have eight or
nine mills.87 At some time thereafter, the Tupiniquins re¬
volted, and, killing many Portuguese, destroyed and burned all
the mills. They then besieged the settlers so closely that they
were reduced to subsisting on oranges alone until relieved by
Men de Sa.88 Having defeated the Tupiniquins, Men de Sa
forced them to pay tribute in the form of forced labor, and
required them to cart wood and rebuild or repair the damaged
mills.89 The later harassment by the Aymores, coming after
the mills were rebuilt, prevented their full operation because
the settlers were afraid to venture alone too far out into the
fields because of attack. Indeed, the hostile presence of the
Aymores drove many of the settlers away, leaving the land
half depopulated.90

87 Soares, Tratado, p. 59.

88 " Instrument,” p. 133.
89 Ibid., p. 147 (evidence of Eytor Antunez) ; p. 150 (evidence of Sebastiao
Alvarez).
90 Soares, in describing the fate of Ilheos, attributes the fall of the captaincy
to " esta praga dos Aymores,” and does not refer to the attack by the Tupi¬
niquins. He does not say that the Aymores destroyed the mills, but, saying
only that their presence limited further expansion, implies the existence of mills.
The account as given above conciliates his statements with those in the " Instru¬
ment©.” The ** Instrumento ” attributes the destruction of the mills to the
Tupiniquins, and then describes the forcing of the Tupiniquins to pay tribute
by rebuilding them. It is here suggested that the six mills that were rebuilt
were restored by the forced labor of the Tupiniquins. Such a suggestion is
wanting in direct proof, but as it stands suggests in turn the subordination of
barter as a means of getting labor to the military and political need of
impressing the natives with the strength of the governor’s army.
122 From Barter to Slavery

The history of other captaincies in Brazil, in the absence of

any further evidence about Ilheos, suggests what had happened.
The settlers, augmented in number and resources by aid from
Portugal, had been expanding their plantation^ To get labor
for them, they may have been enslaving the local natives, or, to
get land, they may have been taking the ro$as from the natives.
In either case, even the usually friendly Tupiniquins revolted
and, as in the case of the attack on the mill in Bahia in 1555,
attacked the mills and plantations.
 Chapter VI

THE ROYAL GOVERNMENT:

circa 1580

To study year by year the results of the wars and disasters

along the coast is neither desirable nor possible in view of the
scant material available. Instead, by looking ahead to about
the year 1580, a remarkably full picture of Brazil in that year
may be obtained by examining four treatises written between
1570 and 1590 by men who had been or were in Brazil.1 The
Brazil that appears in them has an oddly familiar appearance.
Though much of the land was still wild and the Portuguese
few, the society that had been established seems little different
1 Chronologically arranged, the four accounts are:
a. Pero de Magalhaes Gandavo, Tratado da terra do Brasil e historia da
Provincia Santa Cruz, eds. Afranio Peixoto, Rodolpho Garda, and
Capistrano de Abreu (Rio de Janeiro, 1924). Probably composed
about 1570, though not published until 1826. See bibliographic fore¬
word by Rodolpho Garcia.
b. A series by Anchieta
“ Informagao do Brasil e de suas capitanias (1584).”
*' Informagao dos primeiros aldeiamentos da Bahia.”
" Breve narragao das coisas relativas aos collegios e residencias da
Companhia nesta provincia brasilica, no ano de 1584.”
"Informagao da Provincia do Brasil para nosso padre (1585).”
These are general reports for the information of members of the
Company, written by Anchieta from his own notes and from letters
of other Jesuits. They appear in Anchieta, pp. 301-447, and have
already been used extensively in Chapters IV and V above.
c. Fernao Cardim, Trat ados da terra e gente do Brasil, eds. Baptista Caetano,
Capistrano de Abreu, and Rodolpho Garcia (Rio de Janeiro, 1925).
Consists of two treatises (tratados): I, " Do clima e terra do Brasil
II, " Do principio e origem dos Indios and of a " narrativa epistolar.”
The " narrativa ” is a description of the Jesuit mission to inspect Brazil,
written in two letters to the Father Provincial in Portugal. The first
letter covers from spring of 1583 to October, 1585; the second is
dated May 1, 1590.
d. Soares, Tratado. Consists of two parts: I, " Roteiro geral da costa com
largas informagoes de toda a costa do Brazil II, " Memorial e decla-
ragao das grandezas da Bahia de Todos os Santos, de sua fertilidade e
das notaveis partes que tem.”

123
 124 From Barter to Slavery

from that of even the late nineteenth century. True, cities

were still few and small, the Dutch had yet to""come and go,
coffee was a problem of the future, and gold and diamonds
had not added their contrasts of brilliance and depression to
the scene. But even with these and many other notable excep¬
tions, the way in which the Portuguese lived in the land and
dealt with other peoples in it underwent little later change.
Their relation with the Indians, in particular, settled into a
pattern that in the future changed only with the comparative
growth or loss of numbers of each of the peoples.
Speaking generally, the Brazil of about 1580 fell into two
familiar, roughly marked sections.^jDne was the coastal plain
of the northeast coast, warm, fertile, and close to Europe. The
other was the southern coast around Sao Vicente, where moun¬
tains and the plateau rise up from near the sea and where, with
greater altitude and cooler weather, the land tilts away from
the sea toward the great rivers of the interior. In the northern
plain, the towns were places from which to ship crops; the
smaller settlements were the casas grandes; and the cultivated
land was worked largely in rogas where food was grown and
in fazendas of sugar, which by their opulence obscured those
of cotton and other crops. In the south, the climate of the
plateau discouraged an imitation of the sugar economy any¬
where but on the occasional strips of flat land between the
ocean and the scarp of the plateau. Moreover, the location
and character of the Sao Vicente region worked against the
large-scale export of even such crops as the climate permitted.
In the first place, transportation between the coast ports and
the plateau was not easy; and, in the second, the whole region
lay too far south to make communication easy between it and
Europe. The settlers of the south, therefore, turned to another
way of life, descending the rivers of their plateau and forcing
their way into the interior of the continent.
In this Brazil of 1580, even with its regional differences, the
* Portuguese were now beginning to be numerous enough to
dominate the land. Vague though population statistics for the
period seem, they give the impression that between 1570 and
1590 the Portuguese population increased from about thirty-
 The Royal Government 125

five thousand to about forty thousand persons.2 Most of

the ! -increase occurred toward the north. What is more, the
Targer population also brought with it the wealth and enter¬
prise needed to expand the settlements^ as is indicated by the
growth in the number of sugar mills. In 1570, there were sixty
mills among the eight settlements, and, by 1585, the number
had doubled.3
2 Vagueness in the figures of population prevents any definite statement of
the numbers of Portuguese. According to Gandavo’s figures, the population in
1570 was 4,300 vizinhos, or households, distributed thus:
Tamaraca 100 vizinhos
Pernambuco . . 1,000
Bahia . 1,100
Ilheos. 200
Porto Seguro . 220
Espirito Santo 180
Rio de Janeiro 140
Sao Vicente . . 500

3,440
According to Anchieta’s estimates, in the year 1585 the population was 4,010
vizinhos, distributed thus:
Tamaraca .... 50 vizinhos
Pernambuco . . 1,110
Bahia . 2,000
Ilheos . 150
Porto Seguro . 100
Espirito Santo 150
Rio de Janeiro 150
Sao Vicente . . 300

4,010
Quite aside from the incompleteness of the above figures, the population’s
having been calculated in vizinhos adds further complications. Anchieta calcu¬
lates a household as having 6 people (p. 417); 8 people (p. 412); 10 to 12
people (p. 413). In reaching the figures of 35,000-40,000 given above, an
average of 9 to a household has been used.
3 Using Gandavo’s figures for 1570 and those in the other three accounts, the
be distributed thus:
1570 1585
Tamaraca . . 1 ?
Pernambuco .. 23 66
Bahia . . 18 36
Ilheos . . 8 6
Porto Seguro . . 5 1
Espirito Santo . . 1 6
Rio de Janeiro . . - 3
Sao Vicente. . 4 4

60 122
126 From Barter to Slavery

The growth in people and goods was reflected to some extent

in political changesJ Because some population was now be¬
ginning to cluster midway in the long coastline, the newly-
planted city of Rio de Janeiro was in 1572 created a joint
capital with Bahia. Later, as population increased in the north,
center, and south of the coast, the division of government was
abolished and the seat fixed for convenience at Rio.4 Together
with this shift in the capital to meet the movement of the popu¬
lation came further changes in the centralization of authority.
Tome de Sousa had been empowered by the King in 1549 to
extinguish the rights of those donatarios who had not main¬
tained their settlements. The other donatarios, such as the
heirs of Duarte Coelho and Martim Affonso, were not dis¬
turbed, at the time, but when their family lines later became
extinct, their lands, too, were taken over by the King. The
year 1580 consequently marks a period when the decentralized
power of the remaining donatarios was beginning to succumb
to the centralized administration of the crown.
The increase among the Portuguese had no ready counter¬
part in the life of the Indians. As has been seen, many Indians,
especially in the northern part of Brazil, now began to dis¬
appear from the coastJ^Disease and attack had carried off
many, and the remnant, demoralized and fearful, was going
into the back country. Around Bahia and Pernambuco, the
vigorous action of the settlers had destroyed many, but farther
south, around Ilheos and Porto Seguro, even without such
aggressive settlers, the loss amounted to depopulation.5 Weak¬
ened as the Indians were, they still remained the principal
occupants of the land with whom the Portuguese had to deal.
Their losses, though extreme, had not made them useless as
allies in war, nor were they entirely exhausted as a source of
labor.
As a conclusion to this study, therefore, the relations of the
rapidly increasing Portuguese with the Indians may now be
described roughly as they were in 1580. As has been seen,
* Cf. Fleiuss, Historia administrativa, pp. 28-29.
6 CA, p. 382; Anchieta, p. 308. In 1563, according to Anchieta, the smallpox
was general throughout Brazil, with many deaths. Ibid., p. 359. Cf., above,
p. 116, note 73.
 The Royal Government 127

the Indians were divided into the enslaved and the free. Those
who were free could help the Portuguese with barter in peace,
and with aid in war. To begin with, all parts of Brazil will be
examined to see what was the state of such support; and, to
close, the particular instance of Bahia, the seat of royal adminis¬
tration, will be studied in detail.
About 1580, the Portuguese were withdrawing from three
settlements—Tamaraca, Ilheos, and Porto Segumt_ Probably
the attacks of the French and their allies led to the depopula¬
tion of Tamaraca. In 1570 it had had a hundred Portuguese
families and one mill built and two more building. Its poten¬
tial wealth in sugar was increased by its having much brazil¬
wood and cotton.6 Fifteen years later it had already lost half
its population.7 Ilheos suffered in two ways from the Indians.
The local natives, the Tupiniquins, had been so reduced in
number that the Jesuits did not make even one parish of the
survivors. This meant that the Portuguese had no Indians
whom they could make their allies to help them against the
Aymores. Then, the presence of the Aymores themselves ham¬
pered the Portuguese. In 1570, or earlier, there had been four
or five hundred households of Portuguese, with eight mills
around their town. The Aymores, following earlier attacks by
the Tupiniquins,8 now destroyed men and buildings until there
were only fifty households and three mills. More Portuguese
came, but they were unable to operate the mills that were left
because the Aymores made work in the fields dangerous.
Though living in a land well fitted for raising food and cotton,
cattle and live-stock, the Portuguese in Ilheos lived, not even
with good fortifications, in a strip of coast one league deep and
three leagues long.9
In Porto Seguro, diminishing fertility of the soil, which long
years of sugar raising had tended to exhaust, added problems
of producing food to the trouble caused by Indian attacks.
When the Duke of Aveiro bought the captaincy he put men

0 Gandavo, pp. 26-27.

7 Anchieta, p. 410, who adds: " . . . e cousa pouca e pobre e vai se
despovoando.”
8 Cf. above, p. 121, note 90.
9 Gandavo, p. 31; Anchieta, p. 417; Cardim, p. 296; Soares, Tratado, p. 57.
128 From Barter to Slavery

and money into it and sent ships every year to carry back to
Portugal its produce of sugar and brazilwood. He built mills
and invited others in Portugal to do likewise. The Aymore
attack smashed all but one of the seven or eight mills and
destroyed two of the three towns. The local Indians, wasted
by sickness and the maltreatment of the Portuguese, did not
aid the settlers. The Portuguese began to leave, apparently
because of this want of Indian support. The land remained
good for food-farming, though poor for sugar, but nevertheless
the Portuguese began to find a shortage of farinha. That this
should be so when there were two thousand natives in two
Jesuit parishes suggests that some breakdown had taken place
in the relations of the settlers and the natives. Possibly barter
in this case had once more failed as a means of obtaining
food.10
Three other captaincies were more fortunate, and, indeed,
one among them—Espirito Santo—was a veritable phoenix.
Attacked three times by the Aymores, the settlement was finally
re-established by Men de Sa shortly after his first attack on the
French in Rio. Its re-establishment was part of his plan for
expelling the French, for while he drew men from Bahia and
Sao Vicente, he drew nearly all his food and supplies from
Espirito Santo.11 From one mill, the captaincy grew to have
six and produced enough sugar to bring three or four ships a
year to carry it to Portugal. Refounded as it had been by Men
de Sa, it exemplified his assertion of the royal policy of pro¬
tecting the Indians. A considerable quantity of the natives
had been left in the vicinity.12 Some, heathen and Christian
mixed, two thousand all told, lived in native villages along the
coast. Others, between fifteen hundred and three thousand,
had been collected by the Jesuits into a number of parishes.
What is most important is that though the settlers had many
slaves, Vasco Fernandes Coutinho (the son of the first dona-
10 Gandavo, p. 34; Cardim, p. 297; Anchieta, pp. 308, 417; Soares, Tratado,
p. 67.
11 The rest came from Bahia. Anchieta, p. 249.
12 The larger number of natives left around Espirito Santo may perhaps be
explained by the fact that the settlers for so many years had been restricted to
living on an island offshore, and, consequently, had had no opportunity to
destroy the natives.
 The Royal Government 129

tario), acting as agent for Men de Sa, now forbade them from
further attacking the natives.13
A similar defense of the natives was being conducted by the
Jesuits in Sao Vicente, though here without the presence of a
representative of the governor. The three hundred and twenty
households of the old captaincy were now divided into four
towns: three on the sea (Sao Vicente, Santos, and Itanhaem),
and one (Piratininga) on the plateau. As a sugar-planting
center, the captaincy had seen its best days, for, perhaps im¬
peded in its sugar growing by the cooler climate, it still had
only four mills. Possibly because it lay far off toward the
end of the Portuguese lands, it was neglected by European
traders. Indeed, ships went there in such small numbers and
so tardily that in 1584 the settlers were beginning to suffer
from a shortage of clothing. Foodstuffs, too, and cattle were
not abundant, despite the fact that the settlers had many Indian
slaves who could care for fields and corrals. Some settlers,
despite the King’s prohibition, continued to make slaves ille¬
gally. To watch over the free Indians, the Jesuits had col¬
lected some thousand or more into two parishes near the towns,
and were working always to restore the liberty of those who
had been illegally captured. On the whole, relations with the
settlers were amicable, for the natives were willing allies when
the settlers went to join Men de Sa in his attacks on Rio de
Janeiro.14
The fact that the Portuguese had relied so extensively on
Indian allies gave to the establishment of Rio de Janeiro a
character all its own. Confronted with the French in Guana-
bara Bay, Men de Sa in his two expeditions took from Bahia a
number of Tupiniquins as fighters, and acted in Rio with the
support of others from Sao Vicente, as has been seen. With
their aid, he was able to expel not only the French themselves,
but also thousands of their Tamoyo allies. The Tupiniquins,
enjoying a privileged position because of having helped the
Portuguese, worked side by side with the settlers clearing rogas,
even during the course of the skirmishes, and planted food.
13 Gandavo, pp. 34-35: Anchieta, pp. 418-419: Cardim, pp. 339, 342, 344,
Soares, Tratado, p. 79-
14 Gandavo, p. 37; Anchieta, pp. 422-423; Cardim, p. 356.
130 From Barter to Slavery

They were to some extent secure against the slave raiding of

the Portuguese because of the thousands of captives whom they
and the Portuguese took then and later among the Tamoyos.
The city that they helped to plant soon grew in size and im¬
portance. Even before it became the capital of Brazil, it was
attracting settlers. Occupied in 1585 by one hundred and fifty
Portuguese households, it had three engenhos already built
and, besides, quantities of brazilwood. The converted Chris¬
tian natives, three thousand in number, were kept by the
Jesuits in two parishes outside the city proper.15
A considerable contrast in the treatment of free Indians
existed between the two great captaincies of Bahia and Per¬
nambuco, for in Pernambuco they had been all but destroyed,
while in Bahia a remnant had been preserved. In 1570, the
captaincy of Pernambuco had a thousand households in two
towns (Olinda and Guarassu) and on many surrounding plan¬
tations. Around the towns were twenty-three mills, which in
some years produced as much as fifty thousand arrobas of sugar.
More ships went to Pernambuco than to anywhere else in Brazil,
to carry away to Europe its riches in sugar, brazilwood, and
cotton. To the European trade that made it so wealthy, Pernam¬
buco had added in 1570 a lucrative slave trade in Brazil. So
effectively had its soldiers conquered the region that the cap¬
taincy had an abundant supply of slaves and besides, could
export slaves. Other captaincies sent to Pernambuco when they
needed slaves, because in Pernambuco these were so plentiful
and so cheap.16
In 1583, the captaincy was struck by a great drought, which,
drying up streams, stopped the water-driven sugar mills. It
not only killed off the ro^as and fazendas of the towns, but in
the interior scorched the rogas of the forest Indians living
many leagues away. Driven by famine, some four or five
thousand Indians came down to the Portuguese settlements
to beg for food. Some of the Indians, when the drought had
been relaxed by rains, went back to their forest rogas. Others
chose to stay with the Portuguese. Still others were enslaved
16 Gandavo, pp. 35-36, 90; Anchieta, pp. 340-341; Cardim, p. 347; Soares,
Tratado, pp. 98-99.
19 Gandavo, pp. 27-28.
 The Royal Government 131

by the Portuguese.17 In this drought there was repeated in

Pernambuco the sequel to the pestilences and famines of Bahia
of twenty years before. In effect, the drought destroyed the
small number of free Indians that had been left by the earlier
slave-raiding settlers. So few were left that the Jesuits were
unable to find enough to collect into parishes. To find them in
order to carry on the work of religion, the Jesuits had to go to
the slave quarters of the mills and fazendas.18
In 1585, the termo of the city of Olinda alone had two thou¬
sand households of Portuguese,19 with another thousand in the
whole region around.20 It had sixty-six mills,21 and yearly pro¬
duced two hundred thousand arrobas of sugar. Indeed, it pro¬
duced too much, for the forty or more ships22 that came yearly
to load sugar could not carry it all away and left cases and
cases in the warehouses.23 Nevertheless, sugar was the way to
wealth.24 There were more than one hundred men in the city
whose incomes were estimated to range from one to five thou¬
sand cruzados a year; some had eight or ten thousand a year;
and Jorge de Albuquerque Coelho, the son of the first dona-
tario, received nineteen thousand cruzados a year from his tithes
on sugar mills alone.25 Some sugar planters were not so fortu¬
nate, for in importing slaves from Guinea and Angola, they
found the death rate among them high, and so lost much of
their investment.28 The development of the Negro slave trade
reflected the growth of the sugar industry. Because they could
supply disciplined labor and because their fear of the Indians
kept them from running away into the forests, Negro slaves
rapidly replaced Indian slaves on the fazendas and in the mills.
There were close to two thousand of them, said one observer in

17 Cardim, p. 331.
18 Ibid., p. 334.
19 Ibid.
20 Anchieta, p. 410.
21 Ibid.; Cardim, p. 334.
22 Cardim, p. 334; Soares, Tratado, p. 29.
23 Cardim, p. 334.
21 For some of the color and display of life in Pernambuco, where everything
cost thrice what it did in Portugal, see the descriptions and comments in
Cardim, pp. 39, 331, 333-334.
26 Soares, Tratado, pp. 28-29.
26 Cardim, p. 334; Anchieta, p. 410.
132 From Barter to Slavery

1585. On the fazendas alone, said another, there were between

four and five thousand.27
Though replacing the Indians with Negroes may have been
better business, the destruction of the natives did not help the
defense of the great and wealthy captaincy. Despite having
three thousand men at arms and four hundred horsemen for
its defense,28 the captaincy was troubled toward the end of the
century by incursions of the Potiguares, a hostile tribe incited
by the French from Parahyba. Against the guerilla attack of
the Potiguares, the Portuguese only slowly gained a victory.
The Portuguese had to bear the work of defense alone, because
they had left in their neighborhood no Indians on whom they
could call to aid them in a guerilla defense.29
Bahia, on the other hand, had preserved a remnant of its
free Indians and these helped in defending the city and in
supplying it with food and labor. What is more, barter was
the usual method by which the Indians, now congregated into
parishes under the care of the Jesuits, dealt with the Portu¬
guese. But before examining the conditions under which the
free Indians and the barter system were maintained, it is worth
while to glance at the sort of city that Bahia had become. With
allowance made for its size and the numbers of its houses and
people, it was, mutatis mutandis, typical of the other towns and
settlements of the Portuguese in Brazil. Describing it, too,
may be helpful in suggesting the perspective in which the
Indians appeared at the time.
The very appearance of the city about 1580 shows how it
had grown since its founding in 1549. In 1570, the popula¬
tion of the region was estimated at perhaps eleven hundred
Portuguese households. Some of these occupied the city itself
(Cidade do Salvador), the old donatarial town of Villa Velha,
and, four leagues away, the village of Paripe. The rest lived
at the eighteen sugar mills around the city. Beyond the land
taken up by the fazendas were five parishes where the Jesuits
cared for emancipated Indians.30
27 Cardim, p. 334; Soares, Tratado, p. 29. 28 Soares, Tratado, p. 29.
29 Anchieta, p. 306. The remaining settlers in Tamaraca had the same
difficulty in resisting the attacks of the Potiguares and the French.
30 Gandavo, pp. 29, 88.
 The Royal Government 133

Ten years later the plan of the region remained the same—-
a concentration of people in built-up towns, surrounded by
smaller groups at the mills and on the plantations. In 1585,
between two and three thousand Portuguese households occu¬
pied the whole region of Bahia. Of these, about eight hundred
were in the Cidade do Salvador itself.31 The rest lived outside
the city walls on the plantations or at the thirty-six mills.32
Besides the Portuguese, there were now three to four thousand
Guinea slaves in the land,33 and eight thousand Christian In¬
dians, slave and free.34
Some thought that, although the Cidade do Salvador had
pleasing views over the sea, it was not well placed.35 Others
found no fault with it.38 It was laid out partly on a bluff within
the bay and partly on the beach at the foot of the bluff. In
the part on the bluff was a square, a praga, the center of town.
On the south side of the square were some fine houses belong¬
ing to government officials, and across from them on the north
side were buildings occupied by the treasury and the custom¬
house, with warehouses attached to them. The east side had
the building for the municipal council (camara) and the jail,
together with the houses of some private settlers. The west
side was open and looked out over a wide view of the water.
Streets converged on the square and two roads led from it
down to the beach. Two streets of the upper town and one
of the lower were occupied by the shops of merchants. At
the water’s edge were wharves and storehouses. Eight or ten
ships from Portugal37 were usually at anchor on the smooth
water of the bay, while scores of smaller craft belonging to
persons in the city or on the plantations moved about with oars
or under sail.38
sl Soares, Tratado, p. 134; Cardim, p. 288; Anchieta, p. 413.
82 Soares, Tratado, p. 173.
88 Cardim, p. 288.
81 Anchieta, p. 413.
85 Cardim, p. 287; Anchieta, p. 412.
88 The second part of the Soares, Tratado, at times becomes almost lyrical
about the wonders and beauties of the city and the region.
87 The northerly winds, bringing ships from Portugal, lasted from August to
March; presumably the bulk of the ships arrived then, though only eight or
ten ships a year appear to be too small a number. Cf. Soares, Tratado, p. 132.
88 Soares, Tratado, pp. 134-141, 174.
134 From Barter to Slavery

In the lower town along the beach, the houses of the settlers
stood fairly close together along streets. In the upper town,
the big houses were laid out along streets leading away from
the central square, but surrounded by their own grounds. In¬
deed, the number of gardens in the upper town made the view
of it from the sea most pleasing to the eye. Above the tile
roofs of the houses waved tall palms, while over the walls
could be seen the glossy leaves of the evergreen orange-trees of
Bahia.39
In the city were churches and monasteries. For want of
funds, the cathedral still lacked its bell-tower and clock-tower,
but otherwise it was finished and well-ornamented. The Bene¬
dictine monastery, the Capuchin one with twenty religious, and
a hermitage of S. Lucia were all newly started and poor. On
the edge of the bluff, with a wide view over the sea, was the
sumptuous college of the Jesuits, with its church adjoining.
Ordinarily sixty religious lived in this fine stone structure. At
the water’s edge, below the bluff, were the warehouses of the
college where shipments were received from outside the city.
In addition to these establishments, the city had several
churches, standing alone or attached to hospitals and alms¬
houses.
The cathedral was supported by tithes and grants from the
royal treasury, but the income was neither great nor regular.
The dozen or so cathedral clergy were not highly paid and
much preferred to go off as chaplains of the plantations, where
with independence from chapter duties they received double
their former pay. The monasteries lived on the alms of the
settlers. The settlers had given the Capuchins the land for
their establishment and had also built them their church. The
Benedictines seem to have begged their alms outside the city
among the plantation dwellers.40 The Jesuit college stood in
its own grounds, as did the other establishments, but in addi¬
tion, it had nearby farm-lands from which it drew both food
and revenue. It even had, as well, several corrals of cattle.41
Some of the lay settlers were fazendeiros of considerable
** Ibid., p. 140.
40 Soares, Tratado, pp. 136, 173-174.
41 Anchieta, pp. 413-415; Soares, Tratado, pp. 136, 173-174.
 The Royal Government 135
wealth, who lived on their fazendas but who also maintained
town houses. Their wealth was apparent in their passage
through town on horseback, attended by servants and slaves.
They dressed richly, as men with several thousand cruzados
could afford to, and the women of their families wore silk
almost exclusively.42 They represented among the Portuguese
one end of the economic scale. At the other were artisans, un¬
skilled laborers, and beggars. In between were government
offcials, merchants, and other Portuguese in many ways of life.43
Though beyond the city walls the land was taken up mainly
by the sugar-fields, near the walls it was occupied by commer¬
cial ro^as.44 Here farmers grew staple foods, fruits and vege¬
tables, which they took into the town square to sell to those
town dwellers who had no ro^as of their own.45 The town
dwellers, indeed, were well provisioned with these local
goods,46 and could choose what they wished at the same time
that they inspected in the nearby open shops wines from
Madeira and the Canaries and the spices and other wares to
which they had been accustomed in Portugal.47
But if the city was so busy and so well provisioned, what
part in its life was played by the eight thousand Indians who
lived nearby in three parishes under the care of the Jesuits?
When the Portuguese wished either food or labor from the
Indians, they went to the parishes.48 Under the supervision of
43 Soares, Tratado, p. 142. 43 Ibid., pp. 143-147.
44 Cf. above, the establishment of Joao Nogueira, p. 103, note 5.
45 Soares, Tratado, p. 141.
49 "Legumes nao faltam da terra e de Portugal: bringellas, alfaces, couves,
aboboras, rabaos e outros legumes e hortaligas.” Cardim, p. 289.
47 Soares, Tratado, p. 141.
48 The description of barter in the parishes that follows is condensed from a
long passage in Anchieta, pp. 381-382, the reading of all of which is
recommended.
No great change appears in the life of the parish Indians, and their lives
still revolved around the two centers of agriculture and religion. The Jesuits
still celebrated mass very early in the morning before the Indians went off to
perform their various services. (Cardim, p. 315; Anchieta, p. 381.) The
meninos were kept in school for certain hours and were taught reading, writ¬
ing, arithmetic, and doctrine. The older natives returned from the fields in
the afternoon and received further religious instruction then. (Anchieta, p.
381.) So well did this discipline work that food was never scarce. Forty
visitors could be fed at a moment’s notice with no apparent difficulty. (Cardim,
p. 294. Cf., above, pp. Ill, note 48.
136 From Barter to Slavery

the Jesuits, an Indian principal would then agree with them

as to the sort of wares to be exchanged and the sort of work
to be done. Very often as many as one hundred natives a
month would be working for the Portuguese. Usually, they
went to work around the houses of the Portuguese, but occa¬
sionally they might help with the work on the fazendas as well.
The Jesuits laid one restriction on the Indians’ working for
barter. As the number of Indians was small and as all their
labor was needed to produce food for the parishes, no native
was allowed to undertake outside work for barter until all his
parish work was finished. The same care in finishing tasks
was required of the natives when they went to work for the
Portuguese. If a parish native left work unfinished, he was
required to return and finish it. The only drawback to the
working of the barter system was the fact that the distance of
the parishes from the Portuguese houses sometimes made ex¬
change difficult. It was, even so, impossible to move the
parishes closer, because the land between, now occupied by
Portuguese ro^as and fazendas, had been seized from the In¬
dians by the settlers years ago. Despite that difficulty, the
Portuguese demand often exceeded the number of Indians
available for service.
While the parishes thus embodied the Jesuit restoration of
the barter system, they also carried on the work that Men de Sa
had designed for them. Laid out on the outskirts of the city,
they served as a first line of defense against hostile attack and
contributed soldiers for the governor’s forces. In the three
parishes were over eight hundred fighting men alone. They
provided their own arms and food, and more than a dozen
times took the field with the governor. In addition to this
purely military work, they also policed the Bahia region. In
the case of a revolt of the Guinea slaves, the parish Indians
went against them under Portuguese leadership, and then
searched the countryside to find the escaped slaves and to
restore them to their owners.
Compared with the grim days of 1562 and 1563, the life of
the parish Indians in the 1580’s seems idyllic. Firmly con¬
trolled by the Jesuits and recognized as the armed allies of the
governor, they lived unmolested by the settlers. Their life
 The Royal Government 137

combined discipline with freedom from slavery and their rela¬

tions with the settlers gave them for their labor and food the
barter that they so much desired.
* * * * * *
Idyllic, yes; and yet a life that suggests, by contrast and
comparison, what the economic position of the Indians in Brazil
was at almost the end of the first century of Portuguese posses¬
sion of the land.
These Indians of Bahia, protected by the government and
watched over by the Jesuits, represented one of the two classes
into which the friendly Indians were now grouped. Segregated
from the settlers as they were, and providing reserves of food
and at times military aid, they enjoyed a position that (it is
tempting to think) was typical of that of free Indians in the
plantation country of the northeast. The other class was much
less artificially preserved. In the south, in the region of Sao
Vicente, the friendly Indians who were free, less wasted in num¬
bers by attack and disease, mixed much more on independent
terms among the Portuguese. In the absence of the economic
pressure of plantations, this second class acted mainly as allies
who helped the men of Sao Vicente invade and open up the
interior of the continent.
The contrast between these two classes of Indians is no
greater than that between all the Indians of Brazil at the end
of the century and the tribe which Cabral had found capering
on the beaches in 1500. Then, and for thirty years after, their
life with the Portuguese seemed on the whole easy and profit¬
able. The brazilwood that the Portuguese wished could be
had for the barter that the Indians desired, and, in the com¬
paratively casual work of logging, compulsion was unnecessary.
But the increase in the numbers of Portuguese arriving with
the donatarios to establish plantations and settlements made
difficult or impossible the continuation of such easy relations.
Barter remained good as a way in which the Portuguese could
still obtain from the Indians many of the necessities of life, but
for the great business of sugar planting it was an inappropriate
relation. It was useful; it was a method of dealing to which
Indians and Portuguese alike had become habituated; but it
138 From Barter to Slavery

tended to become unsatisfactory and, what was worse, from

the point of view of the Portuguese, it could not be used
consistently to obtain disciplined labor.
The enslavement of the Indians that followed, if carried to
the logical end of subjecting all the natives, would have made
all labor by the Indians a matter of compulsion. Then, perhaps,
plantations could have covered all the land within reach and
mills could have run without ceasing because labor enough was
at hand. The supply of food for the Portuguese, too, would
never have been threatened, for disciplined labor would have
been as productive on rogas as on fazendas. But enslavement
could not go to such lengths. To the royal government, the
Indians were valuable to give the Portuguese an advantage of
numbers in fighting other Indians. To the Jesuits, the Indians’
economic or military position counted for less in the anticipa¬
tion of eternity than the state of their souls. The government
and the Jesuits thus stood between the settlers and the Indians,
insisting on the return to the familiar practice as a means of
winning the interest of the free Indians, of giving them inde¬
pendence from the settlers, and, at the same time, of giving the
Portuguese the benefit of their food and labor. As a conse¬
quence, different conditions of Indians had different relations
with the Portuguese. Free Indians could use barter, and the
restored system existed side by side with the forced labor of
the slave Indians.
The catastrophe of the drama came, properly enough, from
the weakness inherent in the protagonists. Against the diseases
of the Portuguese the Indians had no defense, and that cause
for their weakening is therefore accidental. More immediately
economic in character was the fact that they seem to have been
unsatisfactory in meeting the demands of the Portuguese for
disciplined plantation labor.
Taken in perspective, though the Indians of all the coast
appeared weak against the increasingly strong Portuguese, they
nevertheless left a deep impression on the history of their land.
It had been with them that the Portuguese dealt and to a large
extent it was their weakness or strength that affected the
character of later Brazil.
 The Royal Government 139
In the north, the help of the Indians, given in barter or under
compulsion, made possible the rooting of a plantation economy
in the soil and the life of the region. At the same time, though
helpful in this, they did not continue to provide the sort of
labor that was needed, and their deficiency forced the planters
to look elsewhere for a supply of labor. That supply they
found among the Negro slaves from Africa, who, while re¬
placing the Indians and providing the needed labor, at the
same time exerted so profound an influence on all phases of
the life of the Portuguese in the northeast of Brazil.
In the south, where export agriculture did not become fixed,
and where the tendency to enslavement was accordingly less,
the free Indians inclined to remain both free and friendly as an
unconfined part of the population. Barter continued as a means
by which each people could obtain some part of what they
wished, and continued, also, side by side with enslavement for
other purposes. Indeed, the conditions of life in Sao Vicente
favored the independence of the friendly Indians. The Portu¬
guese were early turning to exploration at a time when their
Indian neighbors were continuing their civil wars against tradi¬
tional enemies. With different purposes, the two peoples
worked as allies, driving away or enslaving their common
enemies, and opening up the land.
In the sixteenth century in the north, the aid and later
failure of the Indians as plantation labor, in fixing the eco¬
nomic character of that region and in opening the way for later
ethnic influences, had made the coastal plain the most im¬
portant part of Brazil. In the sixteenth century in the south,
the mixture of the Indians with the settlers and their aid as
allies gave the men of the south the strength with which to
open up those regions of the interior of Brazil that became
increasingly important in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries.
While it is possible to impose simplicity and a pattern on
the history of the economic relations of Indians and Portuguese,
it must not be supposed that that simplicity was always ap¬
parent in the context of the sixteenth century. Anchieta, stand¬
ing in the gathering gloom of his old age, knew as well as
anyone how complex the struggle had been. Converting the
140 From Barter to Slavery

Indians need not have been too difficult a task if the Jesuits
had had only heathendom to combat. Instead, they had had
to guard against not only the relapsing of the natives into bar¬
barism but also the falling of some of the Portuguese into
infidel ways. The inconstant natives often seemed only too
ready to succumb to the material charms of the Portuguese.
The Portuguese, too, appeared without conscience in their many
ways of preying on the Indians. If with their ancient animosi¬
ties the Indians and Portuguese could not make common cause,
individually they withstood the efforts of the Jesuits. This
Anchieta saw, despite the years of his work and those bright
occasions when he had won the day against the devil. The
possibility of more conversions, which made present discon¬
tents bearable, led on his fellow Jesuits to work toward civiliz¬
ing the Brazilians. But the attacks and fighting and nurtured
grudges, he saw, were a part of the ancient struggle between
the Portuguese and the Indians that in Brazil would end only
with the Indians themselves.49

“Anchieta, p. 291 (written in Espirito Santo, 1594).

 APPENDIX

In 1567, following the series of attacks on the natives referred to

Nobrega and other Jesuits debated the theological and juridical points
of enslavement to obtain a policy to follow in Brazil. The issue was a
pressing one, for the Jesuits, committed to protecting free and friendly
Indians, lacked until then a criterion for judging individual cases. The
debate at various points reflected Nobrega’s attitude toward the Indians,
but, in a wider perspective, indicated in general the attitude of persons
like him. Being restricted to two questions, the debate did not give
room for the discussion of the theory of slavery, of its necessity, its
morality, or much of its history. Nevertheless, the assumption that
slavery was a natural institution, based on the fact that some peoples
were born to be slaves, underlay the exposition. In presenting it here
in sketch, no attempt is made to argue the rights and wrongs of the
case as presented by Nobrega, nor is any correction made of his occa¬
sional historical inaccuracies. The reader will notice, however, how
vividly the discussion reflects the period that has been described in
Chapter V.1
The debate opened with a discussion by Padre Quiricio Caxa of the
law 2a c de Patribus, dealing in particular with two questions: I,
whether a father may sell his child; and II, whether one may sell
oneself. In case I, Caxa decided in the affirmative, assuming extreme
necessity, because of the aid from the child to which the father is
entitled. In case II, the answer was also affirmative, provided the
person was over twenty, because each is the master of his own liberty.
Nobrega’s response began with a strict interpretation of the law de
Patribus in question, and pointed out that the law spoke only of great
poverty and the need to eat, not of extreme necessity. He did not
continue, however, on Caxa’s premise of the parent’s right to support.
He preferred to shift the exposition to discuss natural laws and the
conflicts between them. In such conflicts, the stronger law prevailed.
Thus, the powerful natural law of self-preservation (which he de¬
scribes as the natural obligation of preserving life) overrode other
natural laws governing one’s relations to one’s children and permitted
the sale of the children and the loss of one’s own liberty in order to
maintain oneself alive.

1 The following summary is based on the text printed by Serafim Leite in

Novas Cartas Jesuiticas, pp. 113-129.

141
142 From Barter to Slavery

A series of corollaries followed from this point, not all of which

were strictly pertinent. For instance, he explored canon law and the
opinions of the church fathers on the sale of children, and made dis¬
tinctions in several cases from the Bible. He also examined the
nomenclature of the case: extreme need, great need, etc.
Then, in a fifth corollary he appealed to historical instances familiar
to the Portuguese of Bahia. The instance chosen was that of the
Potiguares, who, during a famine in 1550, sold their children to get
food. These children, he decided, were legitimate slaves, for they were
sold to relieve the distress of the parents.
On the other hand, in a sixth corollary, he found that the instances
of the selling of children around Bahia between 1560 and 1567 were
not comparable. Famine, he said, had not been sufficiently severe. The
children were sold for reasons other than the approved one of relieving
extreme need and therefore were not to be considered slaves. This
part of the discussion he concluded with an injunction that all royal
officials should most carefully examine cases of enslavement in the
light of this reasoning in order to determine the legitimacy of the
enslavement.
In discussing whether one may sell oneself, he took up again the
question of great need. As a rule, one might not sell oneself except in
case of great need. Indeed, he said, as liberty is in the realm of natural
law, it might not be lost, unless the reason for losing it be also in
natural law and more powerful.
In a first corollary, he took up the case of the Indians around Bahia
and Espirito Santo to show that those enslaved after 1560 were not
legitimately slaves. Commenting on Men de Sa’s pacification, he
reviewed the attacks of the Portuguese on the Indians and the driving
of the Indians from their farms and villages. The Caaete war, which
escaped from control, precipitated the catastrophe because the settlers
took advantage of the proclaimed licit war to attack indiscriminately.
The result was the demoralization of the natives. There was, as he
saw it, no extreme hunger, because the hunger in these cases was
caused by the demoralization of the natives, which, in turn was caused
by the Portuguese, who kept them from growing food. The Portu¬
guese, and not any natural force, were therefore responsible for the
hunger.
Turning from these Indians in general, he took up the enslaving of
parish Indians during and following the Caaete war. These parish
natives could not be slaves because they had already begun to be
civilized. Though he did not use the exact language of " natural
slavery,” he showed his acceptance of this point of view. Because
 Appendix 143
these Indians were now both converted and somewhat civilized, they
were no longer in the lowest state of human existence, and, conse¬
quently, were not fit subjects for enslavement.
The practical application of the points in the debate was made in a
conclusion, a " Questao pratica, de consciencia.” It was possible, on
the premises of the debate, for persons to sell themselves and their
children legitimately. Consequently, it was also possible that the
Portuguese had bought many of their slaves with entire legality. At
the same time, much promiscuous slave raiding and indiscriminate
purchasing had accompanied the legal transactions. Because of the
doubtfulness of many cases, all confessors as well as penitents were
under obligation, as a matter of conscience, to know and examine well
the manner in which the penitents or others had been enslaved.
 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The full bibliographical data regarding each of the published works

on which I have drawn in preparing this study will be found in the
footnote in which the first reference to it occurs. This can be located
through the index, where abbreviated titles of all the works consulted
appear in italics. This method of presenting bibliography is used for
the first time in this volume of the Studies and will be followed in
them hereafter.
One work to which I have often referred is HCP—the Historia da
colonizaqao portuguesa do Brasil. This large collaborative work con¬
tains many articles of considerable length by students of various aspects
of Portuguese and Brazilian history. The articles themselves, nearly
all inspired by the nationalistic spirit of the commemoration, treat the
subject from a restricted point of view and seldom exhaust the possi¬
bilities of the source material. As a consequence, the articles them¬
selves have been of less value than the sections of printed documents
that accompany many of them. Indeed, the Historia is invaluable for
making readily available good texts of many of the sources listed below.
I have referred in the introduction to some of the characteristics of
Varnhagen’s Historia geral. Here it need only be emphasized that,
despite the age of the work and its restriction mainly to political his¬
tory, it remains one of the best of general histories of Brazil. The
edition that has been used here, edited and annotated by Capistrano de
Abreu and Rodolpho Garcia, offers corrections and additions that
recover the few errors of fact on Varnhagen’s part.
The most recent treatment of colonial history on a large scale is
that by Almeida Prado. This work came to my attention after the
completion but before the revision of my manuscript. Without attempt¬
ing any detailed incorporation of his findings, I have taken several
pertinent points of his work into account. So far, Almeida Prado has
issued only the first two volumes of six, so that complete judgment of
his work is not yet possible. The principal difference between his
work and Varnhagen’s, with whom he challenges comparison, is his
having available a number of documents that were unknown to Varn-
hagen. Like Varnhagen, he is concerned mainly with politics and
biography, and, perhaps because of this preoccupation, has not altered
the main lines of colonial history as much as might be expected. The
exact nature of his later volumes remains to be seen, but from his

144
 Bibliographical Note 145

having subtitled his second volume Historia da formagao da sociedade

brasileira some change in emphasis may be expected.
The present note will be devoted to describing the source material
for the history of the sixteenth century in Brazil. As may be gathered
from a casual glance through the references below, this material con¬
sists of government orders, receipts, letters, etc., and accounts by
travelers and residents. Among the official documents, the cartas de
doa$ao given to the donatarios were grants of lands and powers, and
the foraes were stipulations of the fiscal relations of the King, the
donatarios, and the settlers. They differ to no marked extent from
grants to proprietary landlords in many other parts of the world, and,
mutatis mutandis, could have been put into effect in Maryland and
Virginia as readily as in Brazil. The regimentos, given to governors,
to fiscal officials, to admirals, and to other royal servants, were definite
instructions of what those officers were to do and how they were to
do it. The one given to Tome de Sousa, of which such extensive use
has been made above, is typical. Cartas regias, alvards, and other
instruments were charters, orders, and decrees for special purposes.
Descriptions of the land may be divided into two groups. In one
are works describing actual travels to and in the land, with many refer¬
ences to the wonders of the country and the habits of its people. Such
works are the letters of the Jesuits, so often cited above, and the
description of Villegaignon’s occupation of Guanabara Bay written by
Lery and Thevet. In the other are treatises about the land that lack
the narrative element of the first group. Such are those by Gandavo
and Soares de Sousa.
In addition to the works in these groups is a small number of his¬
tories, the Historia do Brasil of frei Vicente do Salvador, the Novo
or be serafico of Jaboatam,1 2 and the Chronica2 of Simao de Vascon-
cellos. These last have been of little value to this study, because they
rest on largely the same sources.
All these sources—letters, treatises, and histories—have one element
in common. They each include to a greater or less extent some
transcribed oral tradition. Generally speaking, what the Jesuits knew
of the Indians beyond their own observation was to a large degree the
natives’ oral tradition. Likewise, some of what Soares de Sousa has

1 Frei Antonio de Santa Maria Jaboatam, Novo orbe serafico brasilico, ou

Chronica dos frades menores da provincia do Brasil (2 vols., Rio de Janeiro,
1858-61). This edition was ordered reprinted by the Instituto Historico e
Geographico Brasileiro from the Lisbon edition of 1761.
2 Simao de Vasconcellos, S. J., Chronica da companhia de Jesv do estado do
Brasil (Lisbon, 1666).
146 From Barter to Slavery

to say about the early Portuguese settlers of Brazil is his reporting of

what the Portuguese of his day understood to have been the history of
the early settlements. Vasconcellos’ Chronica, though based on letters
written by earlier Jesuits, at times includes passages the source for
which can be only oral tradition among the Jesuits and the settlers.
The conspicuous example of the transcribing of oral tradition is frei
Vicente’s Historia. Allowing for this element of oral tradition, the
written sources may be used with considerable confidence, depending
on the reader’s estimate of the writer’s opportunity for accurate obser¬
vation. Soares de Sousa, for instance, in his description of Bahia,
leaves on the reader the impression that he was familiar with several of
the documents written to the King by Men de Sa.
Taking first the writing of Lery and Thevet, it will be seen that they
largely duplicate each other’s work in subject matter. And yet the
difference between them is marked. Both were with Villegaignon in
the Huguenot colony that Coligny wished him to establish in Guanabara
Bay. Thevet, the cosmographer, was only incidentally concerned with
the theological disputes that led, in an important measure, to the failure
of the colony. His book, published in Paris in 1557, though it
includes an account of Villegaignon’s expedition, is principally a de¬
scription of the land and the people. Lery, on the other hand, remained
entirely loyal to the Calvinist party in Guanabara Bay that had been, as
he saw it, betrayed by Villegaignon. In his book, published in 1578
in La Rochelle, the description of the land is subordinated to the
defense of the attempt of the Huguenot settlers. Interspersed among
items of natural history and geography are digressions at the expense
of the detractors of the Huguenots. To some extent, he had the last
word in the theological dispute, because his book came out not only
considerably after Thevet’s but also after much of the pamphleteering
for and against Coligny had died down.
The Jesuit letters have greatly influenced writers on Brazilian history,
who have used them because their range of subject matter, their
civilized tone, and their coherence stand in such marked contrast to
the surrounding barbarity in which they were written. Almost all
among them that have been used here are reports to other Jesuits in
other parts of Brazil or in Portugal of what the members of the Com¬
pany were doing in Brazil. The exceptions are occasional letters on
entirely theological matters (cf., for example, Anchieta, pp. 272-273,
275-276, 277-278). In summary, all the letters tell a story that,
stripped of its details, is simple. First, they describe the planting of
the order and the beginning of its work in Bahia. Then they speak
of the extension of the work to Sao Vicente. Next, in discussing the
sending out of missions from these two centers, they describe how the
 Bibliographical Note 147

work prospered or did not prosper after the initial effort of founding.
Nobrega’s letters, especially, deal with the problem of founding and
supporting the order in the relatively urban region of Bahia: how to
build up the endowment; how to get aid from this or that person;
how to protect what the order already had been given; what was the
position of the order in civil and canon law; and other like matters of
business and administration. Anchieta’s letters show another situation,
that of living in the wilder region of Sao Vicente. In many ways, his
letters duplicate the subject matter of Nobrega’s. They are entirely
distinct, however, in describing the Portuguese attack on the French in
Guanabara Bay and the subsequent founding of the city of Rio de
Janeiro. For the one instant, the accounts by Anchieta, Lery, and
Thevet meet to illuminate the scene from three different points of
view. What has been said of Nobrega’s and Anchieta’s letters is true
also of those of the other Jesuits, who are to some extent overshadowed
by the first two. Their letters in collection have been called " random ”
(avulsas), an entirely good description, for in going through them the
reader lacks the sense of a single strong mind observing and directing
the affairs of the Company in Brazil. Nevertheless, it would be a
serious mistake to think the letters simply the reports of messengers.
After a little study, the interests and intentions of each writer become
clear and no one would confuse the equanimity of Ruy Pereira with the
asperity of Leonardo do Valle. To sum up, the Jesuit letters (quite
aside from such other of their writings as sermons, reports on new
members of the Company, obituary notices, etc.) present from one
point of view a mass of information about the Indians and the Portu¬
guese. The miscegenation of the two peoples, the continuation of
anthropophagy, the going native of the Portuguese, the resistance to or
acceptance of the precepts of the Jesuits; these and like topics bulk
large. Less conspicuous is news of how life was running in the towns,
of whether the ships from Portugal were arriving on time, of the
prices of goods, of the production of sugar in a given region or of the
plenty or scarcity of fish.
The two treatises on Brazil by Gandavo and Soares de Sousa are
more methodical but less colorful. Biobibliographical information about
the two may be found in the Bibliotheca lusitana 3 or the Diccionario
bibliografico portugues 4 or in the prefaces to the editions of their

3 Diogo Barbosa Machado, Bibliotheca lusitana, historica, critica e crono-

logica (4 vols., Lisbon, 1741-59).
4 Innocencio Francisco da Silva, Diccionario bibliografico portugues (7 vols.,
Lisbon, 1858-62.) This important work was continued by Brito Aranha and
others; vols. 8-22 appeared in Lisbon between 1862 and 1923; and the work
is still in progress.
148 From Barter to Slavery
works that have been cited above. Gandavo (among other things a
humanist and a friend of Camoes) lived in Brazil and wrote about
1570 and later. Of his two accounts, the first (the Tratado) is a rapid
sketch of the coast (indeed, all there was of Brazil in his time) inter¬
spersed with a few sentences of the history of the captaincies scattered
along it. This he follows with a few short chapters on flora and fauna,
with some remarks about the natives. In his second (the Historia)
he covers much the same ground, except that he goes into more detail
on the flora and fauna and the natives. Both accounts take up barely
one hundred and fifty printed pages, but in those pages there is much
excellent observation.
Soares de Sousa’s Tratado is, with all its faults, indispensable to a
study of the sixteenth century in Brazil. He follows somewhat the
same plan as Gandavo, and, according to Varnhagen, was led to write
his book under the stimulation of Gandavo’s. His first part (Roteiro
geral) is a pilot-book of the coast, so thorough that it has served as a
base for the later pilot-books of Roussin and Pimentel. Between his
directions to mariners, he intersperses a few digressive chapters on the
history of the towns along the coast and others on the history of the
natives. His second part is given over mainly to a description of the
region of Bahia. As a landholder of the region, he knew it thoroughly,
and, a guide convinced of the virtues of his country, leads the reader
by the hand, as it were, through the streets of the town and among the
engenhos of his fellow-fazendeiros. After describing the local fauna
and flora, he concludes with a long treatise on the Tupinambas, with
notes on the other tribes. Capistrano de Abreu said of Gandavo’s
treatises that they were propaganda to induce immigrants to go to
Brazil. The same remark may well be applied to Soares’ description
of Bahia.
Of the three sixteenth- and seventeenth-century histories of Brazil,
two are chronicles of religious orders, with incidental reference to the
state of the country. Jaboatam’s is of the Franciscans and Vasconcellos’
is of the Jesuits. Each is based on chronicles of their respective orders
written in Portugal, and on letters and reports from Brazil of earlier
Franciscans and Jesuits. They lack the abundance of detail and the
missionary fervor that overflowed grammar and rhetoric in the letters
themselves, and tend to idealization of the work of the earlier mis¬
sionaries. The third of the histories, though by a religious, is of the
country itself. Frei Vicente do Salvador had access to a surprisingly
large amount of materials, as is shown in Capistrano de Abreu’s pene¬
trating analysis of his sources. He was no master of style; he was
uncritical of his sources; and he followed them so closely and servilely
 Bibliographical Note 149
that, as Capistrano says, his book is only a collection of documents,
more a number of histories of Brazil than a history of Brazil. Even
so, his book is remarkably alive; interesting, if fabulous, rather than
convincing and accurate. While not dependable in its statements of
the early history of Brazil, it is invaluable in preserving what the
people of early seventeenth-century Brazil thought had happened in
the century before.

SOURCES

1. Royal letters, grants, orders, etc.

Cartas de grandes poderes ao capitao-mor Martim Afonso de Sousa, e a
quem ficasse em seu logar, November 20, 1530.
Carta de poder para o capitao-mor crear tabelliaes e mais officials de
justiga, November 20, 1530.
Carta para o capitao dar cartas de sesmarias, November 20, 1530.
Letter of D. Joao III to Martim Affonso de Sousa, September 28, 1532.
Carta de doagao de Joao Vegado, 1462.
" Fernao Telles, January 28, 1474.
" Martim Affonso de Sousa, no date.
" Duarte Coelho, March 10, 1534.
" Pedro do Campo Tourinho, May 27, 1534.
" Vasco Fernandes Coutinho, June 1, 1534.
" " " " Jorge de Figueiredo Correa, no date.
Foral de Martim Affonso de Sousa, October 6, 1534.
" " Francisco Pereira Coutinho, August 26, 1534.
" “ Pedro do Campo Tourinho, September 23, 1534.
" " Duarte Coelho, September 24, 1534.
Carta de confirmagao da demarcagao das capitanias de Pedro de Goes e de
Vasco Fernandes Coutinho, March 12, 1543.
Carta regia regulando a doagao da ilha de Santo Antonio a Duarte de
Lemos, January 8, 1549.
Regimento de Tome de Sousa, December 17, 1548.
Regimento de Antonio Cardoso de Barros, December 17, 1548.
Regimento dos provedores da fazenda del Rei Nosso Senhor nas terras do
Brasil, December 17, 1548.
Alvara do provedor de Porto Seguro a Felipe Guilhem, January 25, 1557.
Carta regia pela qual Sua Magestade fez merce a Men de Sa de governador
geral das capitanias do Brasil, July 23, 1556.

2. Letters, orders, etc., of donatarios and governors.

Tome de Sousa: Mandados, alvaras, provisoes, sesmarias (1549-1553).
Men de Sa: Instrumento dos servigos de Men de Sa (1570).
Letters:
Duarte Coelho to D. Joao III, April 27, 1542.
Same to same, December 20, 1546.
Same to same, March 22, 1548.
Same to same, April 14, 1549.
150 From Barter to Slavery

Same to same, November 24, 1550.

Pedro de G6es to Martim Ferreira, August 18, 1545'.
Same to D. Joao III, April 29, 1546.
Same to same, April 29, 1551.
Pedro do Campo Tourinho to D. Joao III, July 28, 1546.
Vasco Fernandes Coutinho to same, May 22, 1558.
Tome de Sousa to same, July 18, 1551.
Same to same, June 1, 1553.
Duarte da Costa to same, March 1, 1553.
Same to same, April 3, 1555.
Same to same, April 3, 1555. (Second letter on same date.)
Same to same, April 8, 1555.
Same to same, May 20, 1555.
Same to same, June 10, 1555.
Men de Sa to D. Sebastiao, June 1, 1558.
Same to same, March 31, 1560.

3. Letters, etc., of Jesuits.

Joseph de Anchieta, Cartas, informagoes, fragmentos historicos, sermoes
(1554-1594).
Fernao Cardim, Tratados da terra e gente do Brasil.
Manoel da Nobrega, Cartas do Brasil (1549-1568).
Novas Cartas Jesuiticas.
Cartas avulsas de Jesuitas (1550-1568).

4. Miscellaneous letters, accounts, etc.

Vaz de Caminha to D. Manuel, May 1, 1500.
Pietro Rondinelli, October 3, 1502.
D. Rodrigo de Acuna to Bishop of Osma, June 15, 1527.
Same to King of Portugal, April 30, 1528.
Diogo Leite to King of Portugal, April 30, 1528.
Ambrosio de Meira to D. Joao III, September 26, 1545.
Pedro de Goes to D. Joao III, no month, 1548.
Pedro de Goes to Martim Ferreira, August 18, 1545.
Luiz de G6es to D. Joao III, May 12, 1548.
Duarte de Lemos to D. Joao III, July 14, 1550.
Pedro Borges to same, February 7, 1550.
Affonso Gongalves to same, May 10, 1548.
Felipe Guilhem to same, July 20, 1550.
Pedro Rico to Bishop of Bahia, August 1, 1550.
Licenciado Manuel to D. Joao III, August 3, 1550.
Luis de Dias, master of works, to same, August 15, 1551.
Bishop of Bahia to same, April 11, 1552.
Same to same, July 12, 1552.
Same to same, April 11, 1554.
Francisco Portocarrero to same, April 20, 1555.
Jorge da Costa to same, June 10, 1555.
Simao da Gama de Andrade to same, June 12, 1555.
Jerdnimo de Albuquerque to same, August 28, 1555.
Members of Municipal Council of Bahia to same, December 15, 1556.
Llyuro da naao bertoa que vay pera a terra do Brazyll de que som
 Bibliographical Note 151
armadores bertolameu marchone e benadyto morelle e ferna de
lloronha e francisco miz que partiu deste porto de Lix.8 a xxij de
feureiro de 511.
Naveguagam q fez p° lopes de sousa no descobrimento da costa do
brasil militamdo na capitania de Marti A° de Sousa seu irmao na era
de encarnagam de 1530.
Gabriel Soares de Sousa, T rat ado descriptivo do Brasil em 1587.
Pero de Magalhaes Gandavo, Tratado da terra do Brasil e Historia da
prouincia Santa Cruz.
Jean de Lery, Histoire d’vn voyage fait en la terre dv Bresil, avtrement
dite Amerique.
Andre Thevet, Les singvlaritez de la France antarctiqve, avtrement dite
Amerique.
Hans Staden, Warhafftige historia vnnd beschreibung einer landschafft
der wilden nacketen grimmiger menschfresser leuthen in den newen
Welt America gelegen.
Luiz de Figueiredo Falcao, Livro em que se contem toda a fazenda e
real patrimonio dos reinos de Portugal, India e ilhas adjacentes e
outras particularidades.

N. B. With the exception of such as were published separately (for example,

Anchieta, Staden, Falcao, etc.), the sources listed above were used as printed in
the following collections of miscellaneous documents:

Alguns documentos do archivo nacional da Torre do Tombo, ed. Jose

Ramos-Coelho (Lisbon, 1892).
Documentos historicos (41 vols. to date, 1928 -. Vols. I-II pub¬
lished by the Archivo Nacional; III-XXXIV by the Bibliotheca
Nacional; XXXV-XLI by the Ministerio de Educagao e Saude:
Bibliotheca Nacional. Various editors). (Rio de Janeiro, 1928
—•)
Historia da colonizagdo portuguesa do Brasil: Ediqao monumental
comemorativa do primeiro centendrio da independencia do Brasil, ed.
Carlos Malheiro Dias (3 vols., Porto, 1924-26).
" Documentos relativos a Mem de Sa, governador geral do Brasil,” ed.
Manuel Cicero Peregrino da Silva, Annaes da Bibliotheca Nacional do
Rio de Janeiro, XXVII (1905), 119-280.
Noticias antigas do Brasil 1531-1551. (Separate from Anais da
Biblioteca Nacional do Rio de Janeiro, LVIII, 1940).
 INDEX

Acuna, Rodrigo de: letter to Bishop of Azpilcueta Navarro, Joao de, 96 n.

Osma, 30 n.; letter to King of Portu¬ Azurara, see Eannes de Azurara.
gal, 30 n.
Aeneid, 97 n. Bahia, 29, 30, 31, 33 n„ 35, 44, 50,
Africa, 71; Portuguese in, 16, 17. 65, 126, 128, 130, 137, 142, 146;
Albuquerque Coelho, Jorge de, 55 n., captaincy, 52 n., 56, 57, 62, 66 n.,
131. 67-68, 74, 74 n., 80, 86, 88, 96, 97,
Aldea de Caram, 87 n., 89 n., 90 n. 98, 99, 125 n.; Cathedral, 134; city,
Alguns documentos, 30 n. 84, 102, 103, 108 n., 113, 116 n.,
Almeida, Fortunato de, Histdria de city described, 86-87, 132 ff.; State
Portugal, 19 n. of, 26; town, 60 n.
Almeida d’Ega, Almirante, " O comer- Bahia da Traigao, 33 n.
cio e a agricultura brasileira no Bahia de Todos os Santos, see Bahia.
seculo XVI,” 64 n. Baiao, Antonio, " O comercio do pao
Almeida Prado, J. F. de, 144-145; brasil,” 29 n.
Os Primeiros povoadores do Brasil Baiao, Antonio, and C. Malheiro Dias,
1500-1530, 48n.; Pernambuco e as " A expedigao de Christovao Jac¬
capitanias do norte 1530-1630, 48 n. ques,” 15 n., 43 n.
Almshouses, 134. Barbosa Machado, Diogo, Bibliotheca
Alqueire, a measure, 88 n. lusitana, 147 n.
Alvaras, 145. Barros, Joao de, donatario, 52 n., 54,
Alvares, Diogo (Caramuru), 50 n. 56 n.
Alvares de Andrade, Fernando, dona- Barter: defined, 23; to obtain brazil¬
tario, 52 n., 54, 56 n. wood, 38, 39, 40, 40 n., 69, 93; to
Alvarez, Sebastiao, 114 n., 121 n. obtain building material, 93; to ob¬
Amazon River, 56. tain food, 44, 45, 67-68, 92-93, 94-
Anais da Biblioteca Nacional do Rio 95, 112-113, 135-137; to obtain
de Janeiro, 63 n. labor, 67, 95, 135-137; to obtain
Anchieta, 31 n., Joseph de, Cartas slaves, 94, 95, 116; summary of
informa(oes, fragmenlos historicos use between 1500-1533, 46-47; sum¬
- . . ; 139, 147. mary for period 1533-1549, 78-80;
Angola slaves, see Slaves, Negro. summarized, 137-140; treated by
Anthropophagy, ritual, 64, 66, 105, Varnhagen, 20-22; used in market in
106, 106 n., 147. Bahia, 92, 100; wares used in, 69,
Antunez, Eytor, 121 n. 70; why unsatisfactory, 70.
Arrecifes de D. Rodrigo, 31 n. Beazley, C. R., John and Sebastian
Cabot, 30 n.
Arruda, Miguel de, letter from Luiz
Dias, 92 n. Benedictine monastery, Bahia, 134.
Aveiro, Duke of, 53 n., 62 n., 127. Bertoa, 34 n.
Aymores, 74, 77 n., 78 n., 85, 119, ” Bertoa,” ship, 29 n., 30, 34-38, 69 n.,
120, 121, 127, 128. 71, 73 n.
Azevedo, Joao Lucio de, Epocas de Bishop of Brazil, first, 102, 102 n.,
Portugal economico, 19 n. 114, 114 n; letter to Joao III, 102 n.
Azevedo, Pedro de: '' A Instituigao do Blasquez, Antonio, 119 n.
governo geral,” 81 n.; "Os pri¬ Bloody fluxes, 116 n.
meiros donatarios,” 53 n. Bluteau, Raphael, Vocabulario portu-
Azores, 16, 53. guez e latino, 61 n.

153
154 Index

Boggs, S. W., International Bound¬ Cardim, Fernao, Tratados da terra e

aries, 4. gente do Brasil, 111 n.
Boletim da LJniao Panamericana, 64 n. Cardoso de Barros, Antonio, donatario,
Bom Jesus, parish, 108 n., 110, 113, 52 n., 54, 56 n.
115, 115 n. Carijos, 65, 72, 78.
Borges, Pedro, letter to Joao III, 72 n. Carta de doa(do, 52 n., 58, 58 n.,
Braga, Joham de, 29 n., 35, 38 n. 71 n., 145.
Brazil: discovery of, 13 ff.; origin of Cartas avulsas de Jesuitas, 72 n.
name, 28. Cartas regias, 145.
Brasilin, 31 n. Carvalho, Augusto, Apontamentos para
Brazilwood, 13, 19, 28, 93, 128, 130, a historia da Capitania de S. Tome,
137; calculation of weight and size, 71 n.
36 n., 69 n.; described, 31-32, 31 n.; Casas grandes, 87, 87 n., 124.
trade, 24, 28, 29; traders, 23, 69-70. Casas, of Jesuits, 96, 97.
Breuissima, e sumaria rela(ao Que fiz Castello Branco, Simao de, 59 n.
de sua Vida e obras o grande Castro, Eugenio de, ed., Diario da
Martim Affonso de Sousa, 49 n. navegagao de Pero Lopes de Sousa
" Breve narracao das coisas relativas (1530-1532), 31 n.
aos collegios e residences da Com- Cattle, 51, 97, 103, 104, 129, 134.
panhia nesta provincia brasilica, no Cavalleiro fidalgo, 59 n.; distinguished
ano de 1584,” 123 n. from fidalgo cavalleiro, 54 n.
Burton, Richard F., ed., The Captivity Caxa, Quiricio, 141.
of Hans Staden, 16 n. Central plateau, 25, 26.
Chermont Miranda, Glossario paraense,
CA, 72 n. 61 n.
Caaete, Indians, 114 IT., 119, 142. Cidade do Salvador, see Bahia, city;
Cabral, Pedro Alvares, 13, 19, 24, 29, Bahia, town.
32, 137. Coastal plain, 25, 27.
Caesalpinia (brazilwood), 31 n.; bra- Coastguard, 23, 43-46, 50.
siliensis, 31 n.; echinata, 31 n., Coelho, Duarte, donatario, 52 n., 53,
crista, 32 n. 55, 55 n., 56, 58 n, 67, 69, 71, 75,
Cajaiba island, 103 n. 77, 77 n„ 94, 126; letter to Joao III,
Camara, 60, 133; of Bahia, 103 n., King of Portugal, 39 n., 62 n., 67 n.,
107 n. 69 n., 73 n., 75 n.
Camoes, 148; Lusiad, 51 n. Coelho, Gongalo, 29, 53.
Campo Tourinho, Pedro de, donatario, Coffee, 124.
52 n., 55, 55-56, 57, 67; sale of Coligny, 146.
captaincy of Porto Seguro by, 53 n. Collector of customs, royal, 58.
Canaries, wines from, for sale in Collegios, of Jesuits, 96, 97.
Bahia, 135. Companies, trading, 18.
Cape Frio, 26, 29, 30, 31, 34, 35; Constancio, Francisco Solano, Novo
factory, see " Bertoa.” diccionario critico e etymologico da
Cape Verde islands, 17. lingua portugueza, 61 n.
Capistrano de Abreu, 148; Capitulos Corn, 64 n.
de historia colonial, 22 n.; O desco- Correa, Francisco Antonio, Historia
brimento do Brasil, 26 n. economica de Portugal, 19 n.
Capitalists, investment in Brazil, 94 n. Costa, Duarte da, governor, 55 n., 85,
Captaincies, 52 n.; of Brazil, see Dona- 102 ff., 102 n., 104, 105, 109, 114,
tarios; of Madeira and Azores, 16. 114 n., 119; letter to Joao III, 55 n.,
Capuchin monastery, Bahia, 134. 84 n., 102 n., 104, 104 n., 105, 109.
Caramuru, 88 n., 89, 89 n., 90. See Costas de Pernambuco, 87 n., 89 n.
also Alvares, Diogo. Cotigipe, Rio do, 30 n.
 Index 155
Cotton, 28, 39, 39 n., 61, 61 n., 130; Ferreira, Martim, 56; letter from
fields, 114. Pedro de Goes, 56 n., 62 n., 67 n.,
Cunha, Aires da, donatario, 52 n., 54, 73 n.
56 n. Fidalgo cavalleiro, distinguished from
Cyguaripe, 88 n. See also Sergipe. cavalleiro fidalgo, 54 n.
Fidalgos, 16.
Decadas da Asia, 54. Figueiredo Correa, Jorge de, dona¬
Degredados, 60 n. tario, 52 n., 56.
Denis, Ferdinand, Une fete bresilienne Figueiredo Falcao, Luiz de., Livro em
celebri a Rouen en 1550, 42 n. que se content toda a fazenda, 51 n.
Denis, Pierre, Amerique du sud, 25 n. Firearms, used in barter, 70.
DH, 52 n. Fleuiss, Max, Historia administrativa
Dialogos das grandezas do Brazil, do Brasil, 58 n.
61 n. Foral, 52 n., 59 n., 145.
Diamonds, 124. Freitas, Jordao de, "A expedigao de
Dias, Luiz, letter to Miguel de Arruda, Martim Affonso de Sousa,” 49 n.
92 n. French, 85, 102, 107, 114, 119, 128;
" Documentos de Mem de Sa,” 106 n. in Brazil, 15, 23, 24, 28, 30-31, 40-
Documentos historicos, 52 n., 151. 43, 73-77; in Parahyba, 132.
Dom Rodrigo Rocks, 31 n. Freyre, Gilberto, Casa grande e sen-
Donatarios, 16, 23-24, 48-80. zala, 87 n.
Drought, Pernambuco, 130, 131. Friederici, Georg, Der Charakter der
Dutch, 124; in Brazil, 15. Entdeckung und Eroberung Ameri-
Dyewood, see Brazilwood. kas durch die Europder, 73 n.
Furtado, Alcibiades, ed., Os Schetz da
Eannes de Azurara, Gomes, The capitania de S. Vicente, 94 n.
Chronicle of the Discovery and Con¬
quest of Guinea, 71 n. Gaffarel, Paul, Histoire du Bresil fran-
Engenhos, 62, 63, 67. gais au seizieme siecle, 30 n.
English in Brazil, 15. Gallois, L., Geographie universelle,
Enslavement, Indian 21; of Indians by 25 n.
Indians, 66. See also Slavery. Gama, Vasco da, 13.
Epidemics, 116-117, 116 n. Gandavo, see Magalhaes Gandavo.
Espirito Santo, 142; captaincy, 52 n., Garcia, Rodolpho, Diccionario de bra-
57, 59 n., 62, 67, 68, 74, 75, 80, sileirismos, 61 n.
98, 99, 120, 125 n., 128; parish, Germans, in Brazil, 15.
108 n., 109, H3, 116 n.; State of, Giraldes, Lucas, 121.
25, 26. Goeldi, Dr. (director, Museu Para-
ense), 26 n.
Factor, see Factories; royal, 58. Goes, Damiao de. Chronica do felicis-
Factories, West Africa, 17, 18. simo rei D. Manuel, 29 n.
Famine, 117; Bahia, 1557, 106-107. Goes, Luis de, letter to Joao III, 72 n.,
Farinha, 65, 65 n., 103, 113, 118; de 80.
guerra, 64 n., de pao, 64 n.; de Goes, Pedro de, donatario, 52 n; 55 n.,
trigo, 64 n.; importation in Bahia, 56, 57, 67, 71; letter to Joao III,
1549-1553, 87 n., 88 ff. 62 n., 63 n., 71 n.; letter to Martim
Fazendas, 61, 61 n., 63, 87, 91, 95, Ferreira, 56 n., 62 n., 67 n., 73 n.
114. Goitacazes, 68, 74, 119.
Fazendeiros, 91, 104. Gold, 124.
Fernandes Coutinho, Vasco; donatario, Gomes Carmo, A., Consideragoes his-
52 n., 54, 55, 57, 120. toricas sobre a agricultura no Brasil,
Fernandes Coutinho, Vasco (son), 128. 64 n.
156 Index

Gomes de Carvalho, J., D. Joao III e Jaboatam, Antonio de Santa Maria,

os francezes, 15 n. Novo orbe serafico brasilico, 145 n.,
Gossypium arboreum, 61 n., brasiliense, 148.
61 n. Jacques, Christovao, 15 n., 30, 43, 49.
Goyanazes, 119. Jeronymo, scribe, 35 n.
Gra, Luiz de, 84 n. Jesuit college, Bahia, 134.
Greenlee, R. B., ed., Cabral’s Voyage Jesuits, in Brazil, 83 ff.
to Brazil and India, 14 n. Joao III, King of Portugal, 49; de¬
Grumete, 34 n. cision to populate Brazil, 51; letter
" Gualla,” ship, 88 n. from Ambrosio de Meira, 63 n.; let¬
Guanabara Bay, 45, 46, 78, 129, 145, ter from Bishop of Sao Salvador,
146, 147. 102 n., letter from Diogo Leite,
Guarasu, 130. 30 n.; letter from Duarte Coelho,
Guenin, E., An go et ses pilotes, 15 n. 39 n., 62 n., 67 n., 69 n., 73 n.,
Guinea, 18; slaves, see Slaves, Negro. 75 n.; letter from Duarte da Costa,
55 n., 84 n., 102 n., 104 n.; letter
Hamy, E. T., " Le bas-relief de l’Hotel from Duarte de Lemos, 92 n.; letter
du Bresil au Musee departemental from Francisco Portocarrero, 88 n.;
d’antiquites de Rouen,” 42 n. letter from Luis de Goes, 72 n., 80;
Hanke, Lewis, The First Social Experi¬ letter from Pedro de Goes, 62 n.,
ments in the Americas, 22 n. 63 n., 71 n.; letter from Pedro
HCP, 14 n„ 144. Borges, 72 n.; letter from Rodrigo
Henry, Prince, the Navigator, 16, 17, de Acuna, 30 n.; letter from Tome
59 n., 71. de Sousa, 84 n., 88 n., 95 n.; letter
Hermitage of Saint Lucia, Bahia, 134. from Martim Affonso de Sousa, 61 n.
Historia da colonizaqao portuguesa do
Brasil, 14 n. " La Pelerine,” ship, 38 n., 62 n.
Hospitals, 134. Las Casas, Bartolome de, 21 n.
Hugenots, 77 n.; at Cape Frio, 31 n. Lehmann—Nitsche, R., Hans Staden,
’ ein deutscher Landsknecht in der
Igreja, see Parish. neuen Welt, 76 n.
Ilheos: captaincy, 52 n., 56, 57, 62, 68, Leite, Diogo, letter to King of Portu¬
68 n., 77, 98, 116, 120, 125 n., 126, gal, 30 n.
127; river, 57. Leite, Serafim, S. J., Historia da Com
Incas, 32. panhia de Jesus no Brasil, 84 n.,
India fleets, 16 n., 23, 23 n. Novas Cartas Jesuiticas, 84 n.; Vagi¬
Indian: alliances with Europeans, 33, nas da Historia do Brasil, 84 n.
66, 108, 113-114, 119-120; allies, Lemos, Duarte de, to Joao, III, 92 n.
136; of Brazil, described, 32-33, 63- " Leoa,” caravel, 93 n.
66; wars, 72, 73-78. Lery, Jean de, Histoire d’vn voyage
" Informacao da Provincia do Brasil fait en la terre dv Brazil, 31 n.,
para nosso padre (1585),” 123 n. 145, 146, 147.
" Informagao do Brasil e de suas capi- Licenses, 18, 19, donatarial, 58; to
tanias (1584),” 123 n. deal with Indians, 91; royal, to
" Informagao dos primeiros aldeia- trade with Indians, 83, 83 n.
mentos da Bahia,” 123 n. " Licit war,” 82, 85, 98, 104, 114, 115.
Instituto Historico e Geographico Bra- Lopes de Sousa, Pero, 45.
sileiro, 145 n. Loronha, Fernao de, 19, 29, 34.
" Instrumento,” 106 n.
Itanhaem, 129. Madeira, 16, 62; wines from, for sale
Itaparica, 74 n. in Bahia, 135.
 Index 157

Madre de Deus, Gaspar da, Memorias " Natural slavery,” 142.

para a historia da capitania de Sdo Negroes, 116 n.; in Brazil, 15; slaves,
Vicente, 49 n. 37, 51. See also Slaves.
Magalhaes Gandavo, Pero de, Tratado Nobrega, 61 n., Manuel da, Cartas do
da terra do Brasil e historia da Brasil, 1549-1560\ 96, 100, 112,
Provincia Santa Cruz, 61 n., 123 n. 141 ff., 147.
Maize, 64 n. Nogueira, Joao, 103, 135 n.
Malheiro Dias, C., "A Expedigao de Nogueira, Mateus, 100 n.
Cristovam Jacques,” 15 n.; ed., Nossa Senhora, parish, 105, 108 n.,
HCP, 14 n. 109, 116 n.
Malign tertian, 119 n. N. S. d’Assumpgao, parish, 108 n.,
Mandioca, 61, 61 n., 64, 64 n., 68, 94. 110, 117.
Manihot utilissima Pohl, 64. Notaries, 58, 58 n.
Maranhao, attempted settlement, 56 n. Noticias antigas do Brasil, 63 n.
Marchant, Alexander, " Colonial Bra¬ Nov. C. Jes., 84.
zil as a Way Station for the Portu¬ Nova Lusitania, 87 n.
guese India Fleets,” l6n.
Marchiones, merchants, 19. Olinda, 69, 130, 131.
Marinheiro, 34 n. Oliveira Lima, Manuel de, "A Nova
Market, 135; Bahia, 90 ff., 100. Lusitania,” 30 n.
Maryland, 145. Orange trees, 134.
Mayas, 32. Ormessan, Baron de Saint-Blancard,
Meira, Ambrosio de, letter to Joao Bertrand d’, " Protestation,” 30 n.,
III, 63 n. 58 n.
Mello, Franco, A. A., O indio bra- Osma, Bishop, of, letter from Rodrigo
sileiro e a revoluqao jranceza, 43 n. de Acuna, 30 n.
Mem de Sa, see Men de Sa.
" Memorial e declaragao das grandezas Pagem, 34 n.
da Bahia de Todos os Santos, de sua Parahyba, 132; State of, 25.
fertilidade e das notaveis partes que Parahyba do Norte, river, 56.
tern,” 123 n. Parahyba do Sul: captaincy, 52 n., 62,
Men de Sa, governor, 85, 95, 102 ff., 67, 68, 74, 75, 80, 120; river, 55 n,
107 If., 107 n., 109, 114, 119, 120, 57.
121, 128, 136, 142, 146; letter to Parana, 27.
D. Sebastiao, 110 n., 113 n., 114 n. Parish, defined, 105 n.
Mendes, Candido, study on Caramuru, Parishes, Jesuit, 99, 105 ff., 127, 128,
50 n. 130, 131, 132, 135-137; depopu¬
Menezes, Jorge, 59 n. lated, 115, 118-119; division of
Meninos, 97, 98, 99, 135 n. labor in, 110-111; listed, 108 n.
Mercadoria, defined, 92 n. Parmentier, Jacques, 30 n., 42.
Merea, Paulo, "A solugao tradicional Parrots, 39 n.
da colonisagao do Brazil,” 51 n. Pereira, Ruy, llln., 147.
Metraux, Alfred, La civilisation ma- Pereira Coutinho, Francisco, donatario,
terielle des tribus Tupi-Guarani, 52 n., 53, 55, 56, 66 n., 68 n.
66 n.; ''Migrations historiques des Perestrello, Bertholameu, 59 n.
Tupi-Guarani,” 66 n. Perkin, A. G., and A. E. Everest, The
Mexico, 32. Natural Organic Coloring Matters,
Monopolies, 58; see also Licenses. 32 n.
Morison, S. E., Admiral of the Ocean Pernambuco, 30, 31, 33 n., 45, 62 n.,
Sea, 34 n. 89, 94, 99, 116 n., 130; captaincy,
Moslems, 17. 26, 52 n., 55 n., 56, 62, 67 68, 69,
158 Index

70, 72, 73-74, 75, 80, 86, 88, 98, Rio Grande do Norte, river, 65.
119, 120, 125 n.; factory, 38-39; Rio Itapocuru, 119 n.
State of, 25. Rio Real, 30 n., 119 n.
Peroaso, 88 n. Rio Vermelho, 105, 109, 108 n.
" Piedade,” ship, 44 n. Roads, around Bahia, 112 n.
Pimentel, 148. Rogas, 61, 61 n., 74, 77, 98 n., 104,
Pinto, Estevao, Os lndigenas do Nord- 106, 113, 117, 124, 129, 130, 135,
este, 66 n. 136, 138.
Piraja, 108 n. Ro(as de mantimentos, 103, 103 n.
Piratininga, 50, 84 n., 129. Rodrigues, Francisco, Historia da
Pleurisy, 116 n. Companhia de Jesus na Assistencia
Population, Brazil 1570-1590, 124- de Portugal, 84 n.
125, 125 n. Rohan, Beaurepaire, Diccionario de
Porto francez, 31 n. vocabulos brazileiros, 61 n.
Porto Seguro, 126, 127; captaincy, Romeiro, Francisco, 56 n., 57.
52 n., 53 n., 59, 62, 68, 72, 77, 78, Rondinelli, Pietro, letter of, 29.
94, 98, 120, 125 n.; town, 67. " Roteiro geral da costa com largas
Porto velho dos franceses, 31, 31 n. informagoes de toda a costa do Bra¬
Portocarrero, Francisco, letter to Joao zil,” 123 n., 148.
III, 88 n. Rouen, connection with Brazil trade,
Portugal: colonial administration, 16 42.
ff.; expansion overseas, 16 ff.; Roussin, 148.
methods of overseas trade, 16 ff. Royal government in Brazil, 81 ff.
Portuguese: in Africa, 16 ff., in At¬ Royal governor in Brazil, 24.
lantic islands, 16 ff.
Potiguares, 132. Salt-works, 58.
Povoagao de Pereira, 88 n., 89 n. Salvador, Frei Vicente do, Historia do
Principal, 106; agreements of Indian, Brazil 1500-1627, 66 n.
with Jesuits on wares used in barter, Santa Cruz, parish, 108 n., 109, 113.
136; Indian chief, 83. Santiago, parish, 108 n., 109, 113.
Santo Amaro, captaincy, 56 n.
Ramalho, Joao, 50 n. Santo Antonio, parish, 108 n., 115,
Ramos-Coelho, Jose, ed., Alguns docu¬ 115 n.
ment os do archivo nacional da Torre Santos, 129.
do Tombo, 30 n. Sao Andre, parish, 108 n., 110, 115.
Ramusio, Giovanni, Delle navigationi Sao Francisco river, 25, 31, 34, 65,
et viaggi, 30 n., 42. 114, 115.
Regimentos, 145. " Sao Hieronimo,” ship, 44, 44 n.
Reinel map, 1504, 41. Sao Joao, parish, 108 n., 109, 113.
Reis Magos river, 67. Sao Miguel, parish, 108 n., 110, 113.
Rembe, 108 n. Sao Paulo, parish, 108 n., 109, 112 n.,
Repartimiento, of Indians, 107 n. 113, 116 n.; State of, 25, 50, 56.
Resgate, defined, 92 n. Sao Pedro, parish, 108 n., 110, 110 n.,
Revista do Instituto historico de Sao 115.
Paulo, 50 n. Sao Sebastiao: Cidade de, see Rio de
Revista do Instituto historico e geo- Janeiro; parish, 105, 108 n., 109.
graphico brasileiro, 50 n. Sao Tome, 17; captaincy, see Parahyba
Rio de Janeiro, 26, 29, 31 n., 45, 57, do Sul, captaincy.
65, 77 n., 98, 102, 107, 114, 119, Sao Vicente, 84 n., 125 n., 128, 129,
120, 125 n., 126, 129, 147. 137, 139, 146, 147; captaincy, 49
Rio de Joane, 108 n., 109. n, 50, 51, 52 n., 56, 60 n., 62, 65,
 Index 159
72, 77, 77 n., 78, 80, 86, 94, 94 n., Sugar, 17, 20, 28, 51, 61, 62, 124,
98, 100 n., 119, 120, 124. 128, 129, 130, 137, 147.
Schetz, family of Antwerp, 94 n. Sugar mills, 62, 67, 76, 87, 114, 121,
Sebastiao, D., letter from Men de Sa, 125, 125 n., 128, 130, 131, 133.
110 n., 113 n., 114 n. Swords, used in barter, 70.
Sergipe, 87 n., 89 n.
Sesmarias, 58 n., 61 n. Tamaraca, captaincy, 52 n., 56, 66 n.,
Settlement, description of typical, 59, 75, 75 n., 76, 77, 80, 125 n., 127,
63. 132 n.
Silva, Innocencio Francisco da, Dic- Tamoyos, 42, 74, 77 n., 78 n, 85, 119,
cionario bibliografico portugues, 129, 130.
147 n. Taparica, island, 108 n., 113, 120.
Simonsen, R. C., Historia economica Tapepigtanga, 108 n., 110, 116 n.
do Brazil, 19, 19 n. Taperagua, 108 n., 110.
Sirio, a measure, 88 n. Tapioca, 65.
Slave raiding, 72. Telles, Fernao, 59 n.
Slave trade, 130. Termo, 87.
Slavery, Negro, 20; of Indians, 71-73. Terra da Vera Cruz, 14.
See also Enslavement. Teschauer, Carlos, S. J., Novo diccion-
Slaves, 58; Indian, 34; Negro, 72-73, ario nacional, 61 n.
97, 97 n., 114, 131, 133, 136, 139. Thevet, Andre, Les singvlaritez de la
Smallpox, 116, 119 n., 126 n. France antartique, avtrement dite
Soares, Tratado, 26 n. Amer'tque, 31 n., 145, 146, 147.
Soares de Sousa, Gabriel, Tratado de- Tinhare, island, 57, 93 n., 113.
scriptivo, 26 n.; 145, 147-148. Tobacco, 20, 62 n.
Sources, 149-151. Tordesillas, demarcation line, 52, 56.
Sousa, Martim Affonso de, donatario, Tupi-Guaranis, 65.
44 n., 45 n., 49-51, 52 n., 54 n., 57, Tupinambas, 27, 55, 65, 66, 68, 68 n.,
58 n., 71, 77, 77 n., 94, ,126; letter 74, 75, 77, 78, 119, 148; in Rouen
to Joao III, 61 n. 1550, 42.
Sousa, Navega(ao, 31 n. Tupiniquins, 65, 66, 67, 68, 77, 78,
Sousa, Pero Lopes de, donatario-, 33, 82, 94, 95, 119, 120, 121 n., 122,
39 n., 43, 50, 52 n. 54-55, 55 n., 127, 129; in Rouen 1550, 42.
66 n., 77 n. Tutuapara, 87 n., 89, 89 n., 108 n.,
Sousa, Regimento, 81 n. 109-110, 113.
Sousa, Tome de, 53 n., 60 n., 81 ff., Tynhaem, 88 n.
93 IT., 99, 102, 103, 113, 126, 145;
letter to Joao III, 84 n., 88 n., 95 n. United States Hydrographic Office,
Souza, Bernardino Jose de, Dicionario South American Pilot, 26 n.
da terra e gente do Brasil, 61 n.; Uruguay, 33 n., 45.
Onomdstica geral de geografia bra-
sileira, 61 n; O pau-brasil na his¬ Valle, Leonardo do, 16 n., 147.
toria nacional, 31 n. Varnhagen, Francisco Adolpho de,
Spaniards, in Brazil, 15. Historia geral do Brasil, 20, 20 n.,
Spinning, 111. 54, 73 n., 144, 148; 2d ed., 4 study
Staden, Hans, 77 n., Warbafftige His¬ on Caramuru, 50 n.
toria, 34 n. Vasconcellos, Simao de, S. J., Chronica
Stansfield, W. S., " Half a Century of da companhia de Jesv, 145 n., 148.
the Dyeing and Finishing of Vegado, Joao, 59 n.
Worsted, Woolen and Linen Piece- Vicente do Salvador, frei. Historia do
Goods,” 32 n. Brasil, 120 n., 145, 146, 148-149.
160 Index

Vidal de la Blache, P., Geographie Wares used in barter, 90, 90 n., 92,
universelle, 26 n. 92 n., 93 n., 94.
Watt, Sir George, The Wild and
Villa Velha, 132.
Cultivated Cotton Plants of the
Villages, Indian, 83.
World, 61 n.
Villegaignon, 31 n., 77 n., 78 n., 85,
Weaving, 111.
145, 146.
Wroth, Lawrence B., 76 n.
Virginia, 145.
Vizinhos, 125 n. Yucatan, 32.
 Date Dr

date due
^-ATE DE FtETOUR
 F 2526 M273 1966
Marchant. Alexander Nelso 010101 000
From barter to slavery; the ec

0 1 63 85753 3
TRENT UNIVERSITY

275314