DISCOVERY

For almost three centuries following the discovery of Brazil in 1500 the Portuguese court was flooded with reports of fabulous gold strikes in Brazil. These had often lacked foundation and had been a blend of misguided trust placed in native American legends, over-optimistic accounts by explorers, and the apparently undeniable logic that a continent which had rewarded the Spaniards with gold, emeralds, and silver must also possess precious metals in that part allocated to the Portuguese by the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494).

Not all these reports had been totally devoid of truth. Gold had indeed been found in São Vicente in the 1560s, and by the 1570s Paulistas had discovered alluvial gold in Paranaguá. There had been reports of gold strikes in the interior of the captaincy of Bahia by João Coelho de Sousa; his brother Gabriel Soares de Sousa had received official authorization (1584) to launch an expedition to confirm these findings. In the seventeenth century as the bandeirantes penetrated deep into the interior of Brazil in their search for Indian slaves and precious metals, reports from Paranaguá, Curitiba, São Vicente, Espírito Santo, and Pernambuco convinced the crown of the potential mineral wealth of Portuguese America. But only at the end of the seventeenth and during the first half of the eighteenth centuries did Brazil yield up her riches.

Around 1695 the governor of Rio de Janeiro received substantiated reports of major gold strikes within his jurisdiction, at Rio das Velhas in the region referred to in official correspondence initially as the ‘mines of São Paulo’.