Information AboutBandeiras |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT BANDEIRANTES | |
| history of brazil | |
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, located in São Paulo, Brazil]] The Bandeirantes were Brazilian colonial Scout s who took part in the Bandeiras , exploration expeditions. Through these, the Bandeirantes expanded Portuguese America from the small limits of the Tordesilhas Line to roughly the same territory as current Brazil . This expansion discovered mineral wealth that made the fortune of Portugal during the 17th and 18th centuries. BANDEIRAS The ''Bandeiras'' were the expeditions by Paulistas and allied Indians to find precious metals and stones, new Indian Slaves and runaway slaves. Leaving from the then poor and tiny village of São Paulo Dos Campos De Piratininga , which was so unimportant to the Portuguese Empire that it even used the Língua Geral instead of the Portuguese Language , the ''Bandeiras'' followed the course of the rivers -- in Southeast Brazil rivers flow from the edge of the Serra Do Mar range in the coast inland -- and profited from the Union of the Crowns of Portugal and Spain to effectively invade the Spanish America territories which were then unimportant to Spain, their rich mines and Indian cities being in the western Andes mountains. Bandeirantes operate out of São Paulo , home base for the most famous bandeirantes. Indians, mostly free men, and Mestizos predominated in the society of São Paulo in the 16th and early 17th century and outnumbered Europeans. The influential families generally bore some Indian blood and provided most of the leaders of the bandeiras, with a few notable exceptions such as Antonio Raposo Tavares (1598 - 1658), who was European born. As a result of the ''Bandeiras'', the Capitaincy Of São Vicente became the basis for the Vice-kingdom Of Brazil and encompassed current states of Santa Catarina , Paraná , São Paulo , Minas Gerais , Goiás , Tocantins and both Northern and Southern Mato Grosso . SLAVE RAIDS There were over 2.5 million Indigenous Peoples In Brazil in 1500. By the middle of the 18th century the number had dropped to between 1 million and 1.5 million. Many tribes living close to the Atlantic coast had been exterminated. Others had fled into the interior, and their flight created an ever-greater need for Slaves , one that was not entirely satisfied by importing them from Africa. From Sao Paulo the infamous Bandeirantes, adventurers mostly of mixed Portuguese and native ancestry, penetrated steadily westward in their search for Indian slaves. Along the Amazon River and its major tributaries, repeated slaving raids and punitive attacks left their mark. One French traveler in the 1740s described ''hundreds of miles of river banks with no sign of human life and once-thriving villages that were devastated and empty.'' In some areas of the Amazon Basin , and particularly among the Guarani of southern Brazil and Paraguay , the Jesuits had organized their Jesuit Reductions along military lines to fight the slavers. Some of the most famous bandeirantes were Bartolomeu Bueno da Silva, Fernao Dias Pais, Antonio Rodrigues Arzao, Antonio Pires de Campos and Bartolomeu Bueno de Siqueira. Antônio Raposo Tavares lead in 1628 a bandeira, composed of 2.000 allied Indians, 900 Mamluks (Mestizos) and 69 white Paulistanos, to find precious metals and stones and / or to capture Indian slaves. Only this expedition was responsible for the destruction of most of the Jesuit missions of Spanish Guairá and the capture of over 60.000 Indian slaves. From 1648 to 1652, Tavares also lead one of the longest known expeditions from São Paulo to the mouth of the Amazon river, investigating many of its tributaries, including the Rio Negro , and covering a distance of more than 10.000 km. Expedition arrived in Andean Quito , part of the Spanish Viceroyalty Of Peru , and stayed there for a short time in 1651. From the 1200 men who left São Paulo, only 60 reached the final destination in Belém . EXTERNAL LINKS |
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