Bandeirantes
Bandeirantes were frontiersmen and explorers in colonial Brazil who, from the early 16th century, participated in inland expeditions to find precious metals and enslave indigenous peoples. They played a major role in expanding Brazil's borders to its approximate modern-day limits, beyond the boundaries demarcated by the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas.
Most bandeirantes hailed from São Paulo, then a small village in the Captaincy of São Vicente from 1534 to 1709 and later the Captaincy of São Paulo from 1720 to 1821. Some bandeirantes were descended from Portuguese colonists who settled in São Paulo, but most were of mameluco descent with both Portuguese and indigenous ancestry. This was due to miscegenation being the norm in colonial Brazilian society, as well as polygamy.
Initially, the bandeirantes aimed to explore and expand the Portuguese colonial territory beyond the boundaries established by the Treaty of Tordesillas. They ventured into unmapped regions in search of economic opportunities, particularly the discovery of gold, silver, and diamonds. Over time, as their expeditions progressed, the bandeirantes also began to capture and enslave indigenous peoples, which became a significant part of their activities. Their primary goal remained the expansion of territory and the search for resources, which played a major role in shaping the modern borders of Brazil. The bandeirantes spoke a mixture of Portuguese and the Paulista General Language, which influenced the toponyms and place names in the interior of the colony to this day.
Name
The term comes from Portuguese bandeira or flag, and by extension, a group of soldiers, a detached military unit or a raiding party. In medieval Portugal a bandeira was a military unit of 36 soldiers. The words were not used by the bandeirantes themselves. They used words like entry, journey, voyage, company, discovery and rarely, fleet or war. One writer dates bandeira from 1635 and bandeirante from 1740.Background
With the treaty of Tordesillas in 1494 the South American continent was divided between Portuguese Empire and the Spanish Empire along a meridian 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde islands. Many Bandeirantes were Mulattos and came from the Portuguese settlement in São Paulo who were sent out to chart and explore the interior of the country.By exploring the interior of the country, Portugal was able to claim land that exceeded the line drawn by the treaty of Tordesillas in 1494 and began to encompass what is today the country of Brazil. Bandeirantes usually numbered anywhere from 50 to several thousand and were sponsored by the wealthy elites. Many of these expeditions into the interior of Brazil set up trading posts and built roads that connected the settlements together.
Paulistas
Before there were bandeirantes there were Paulistas. Brazil was originally a coastal strip between mountains and sea dominated by slave-worked sugar plantations. When the Portuguese crossed the mountains to the São Paulo plateau they were cut off from the sea and faced a great wilderness to the north and west where they might find their fortunes or die trying. The coastal Portuguese used African slaves while the Paulistas used Indian slaves or workers and many were part-Indian themselves.Identity
Although the bandeirantes themselves were a product of diverse cultural backgrounds. Darcy Ribeiro, Brazilian anthropologist, historian, sociologist, author and politician, states that the bandeirantes were racially mixed, with interbreeding with indigenous people being common, even among the elite. The families of São Paulo were patrician and polygamous, but Catholic marriage only became consolidated later. The largest flag, by Manuel Preto and Antônio Raposo Tavares, in 1629, had 69 whites, 900 mamelucos and 2 thousand indigenous people.These individuals were often the descendants of indigenous women and Portuguese settlers. Contrary to some portrayals, many bandeirantes were of indigenous, mestiço, or lower-class Portuguese origin. In fact, as noted by historical sources, "Most of the bandeirantes were indigenous people and other poor people from the colony, many women were bandeirantes." – These bandeirantes were often marginalized or disenfranchised people who found opportunity through these expeditions, which were both a means of survival and a path to personal achievement.
Slavery
The main focus of the bandeirantes' missions was to capture and enslave native populations. They carried this out by a number of tactics. The bandeirantes usually relied on surprise attacks, simply raiding villages or collections of natives, killing any who resisted, and kidnapping the survivors. Trickery could also be used; one common tactic was disguising themselves as Jesuits, often singing Mass to lure the natives out of their settlements. At the time, the Jesuits had a deserved reputation as the only colonial force that treated the natives somewhat fairly in the Jesuit reductions of the region.If luring the natives with promises did not work, the bandeirantes would surround the settlements and set them alight, forcing inhabitants out into the open. At a time when imported African slaves were comparatively expensive, the bandeirantes were able to sell large numbers of native slaves at a huge profit due to their relatively inexpensive price. Bandeirantes also teamed up with a local tribe, convincing them that they were on their side against another tribe, and when both sides were weakened the Bandeirantes would capture both tribes and sell them into slavery.
File:Oscar Pereira da Silva - Combate de Botocudos em Mogi das Cruzes, Acervo do Museu Paulista da USP.jpg|thumb|A battle between the militia of Mogi das Cruzes and the Botocudos
By the 17th century, Jesuit missions had become a favorite target of the expeditions. A bandeira that took place in 1628 and was organized by Antônio Raposo Tavares raided 21 Jesuit villages in the upper Paraná Valley, ultimately capturing about 2,500 natives. A bandeira tactic was to set native tribes against each other in order to weaken them, and then to enslave both sides.
In 1636, Tavares led a bandeira, composed of 2,000 allied Indians, 900 mamelucos, and 69 white Paulistas, to find precious metals and stones and to capture Indians for slavery. This expedition alone was responsible for the destruction of most of the Jesuit missions of Spanish Guayrá and the enslavement of over 60,000 indigenous people.
Between 1648 and 1652, Tavares led 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, ultimately covering a distance of more than 10,000 kilometers. The expedition traveled to Andean Quito, part of the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru, and remained there for a short time in 1651. Of the 1,200 men who left São Paulo, only 60 reached their final destination in Belém.
Relations with Jesuits
The Bandeirantes and the Jesuits did not agree on the treatment of the native people. The Jesuits wanted to convert the native population to Christianity, while the Bandeirantes wanted to sell the native population into slavery. Jesuit leader father Antonio Ruiz de Montoya attempted to lead 12,000 natives to safety into Argentina in an attempt to save them from Bandeirantes.With the death of Diego Alfaro by the hands of Bandeirantes a conflict was sure to come between the two groups and it all came to head when Jerónimo Pedroso de Barros and Manuel Pires attacked a Jesuit camp. The Jesuits led by father Pedro Romero had a force of around 4,200, against a Bandeirantes force of about 3,500. Romero repelled the assault and won the day. With the Treaty of Madrid Spain and Portugal agreed to dismantle the Jesuit missions called the Misiones Orientales. The Jesuits fought back against this order and lead to the Guaraní War which saw the Spanish and Portuguese fight against the native Guarani population.
Despite early failures due to guerrilla tactics, the Spanish and Portuguese attacked. José Joaquín de Viana defeated Guarani leader Sepé Tiaraju and destroyed the Jesuit mission camps. The battle ended the war. Portugal expelled the Jesuits from the country in 1759, ending the relations between the Jesuits and the Bandeirantes.
Fernão Dias Pais Leme
The bandeirante Fernão Dias was born in São Paulo in 1608 to a well-off family and spent much of his early life as a farmer in Pinheiros before becoming an income inspector in 1626. He was later called "The Emerald Hunter". In 1638, he joined Antônio Raposo Tavares on his expedition to the present states of Paraná, Santa Catarina, and Rio Grande do Sul. In 1644, Dias left on his own expedition.In an expedition in 1661, in an attempt to find more natives to enslave, Dias explored south of the Anumarana mountain range into the Kingdom of Guaianás. Dias returned in 1665 with 4,000 slaves from three different tribes. During Dias's 1671 expedition he received his nickname, after he found emeralds in Sabarabuçu. In 1681, Dias died of disease while on an expedition in which he found Tourmaline.
Gold hunting
In addition to capturing natives as slaves, bandeiras helped to extend the power of Portugal by expanding its control over the Brazilian interior. Along with the exploration and settlement of this territory the bandeiras discovered mineral wealth for the Portuguese, which they had been previously unable to profit from.In the 1660s, the Portuguese government offered rewards to those who discovered gold and silver deposits in inner Brazil. The bandeirantes, driven by profit, ventured into the depths of Brazil to enslave natives and find mines and receive government rewards. As the number of natives diminished, the bandeirantes began to focus more intensely on finding minerals.
These exploration by the Bandeirantes set in motion the Brazilian Gold Rush of the 1690s. The gold rush was one of the largest in the world and produced the largest gold mines in South America. Bandeirantes discovered gold in the mountains of Minas Gerais. This caused many people from the north of Brazil to go south in hopes of finding gold.