Pedro Teixeira | |
---|---|
Born | 1570-1585 |
Died | 4 July 1641 |
Nationality | Portuguese |
Occupation | Explorer |
Known for | First European to travel up the Amazon River. |
Pedro Teixeira (b.1570-1585 - d.4 July 1641), occasionally referred to as the Conqueror of the Amazon, was a Portuguese conquistador and military officer, who became, in 1637, the first European to travel up and down the entire length of the Amazon River, he also headed the government of the captaincy of Pará in two different periods, one in 1620-1621 and another in 1640–1641. [1]
Teixeira was born either in 1570 or 1585 at the Vila of Cantanhede, born to a noble family, he was a Knight of the Order of Christ and a Portuguese nobleman in service of the royal family, he married Ana Cunha in Praia, Azores, daughter of Sargento-Mor Diogo de Campos Moreno, with whom Teixeira fought together in Maranhão [2] [3]
First arriving in Brazil on 1607, Teixeira participated in Portugal's campaign against French Maranhão, he fought in the Battle of Guaxenduba and distinguished himself commanding either the fort of Natividade or Santa Maria. [2] [3]
Because of Teixeira and other Portuguese who pushed into the depths of the Amazon, Portugal was able to obtain far more of South America from their Spanish competitors than the Treaty of Tordesillas had granted in 1494. Teixeira's expedition became the first simultaneously to travel up and down the Amazon River. He was called by the Indian natives Curiua-Catu, meaning The Good and Friendly White Man. [4]
Pedro Teixeira was part of Francisco Caldeira Castelo Branco's expedition to found the city of Belém. [5] On 9 August 1616, by orders of Francisco Caldeira, he left with two armed canoes to fight the Dutch and English, which had established positions in the northern shore of the Amazon River, where he captured a Dutch ship in the Xingu estuary and brought its artillery guns to Belém. [2] [3] [6] In 1617, he also led attacks against the Tupinambás, aiding an ongoing campaign by Portuguese settlers in Maranhão, with the goal of a clearing a land road between Belém and São Luis. [7]
In 1620, when Custodio Valente, the Capitão-Mor in charge of Pará left for Portugal. Teixeira, his adjunct, became interim governor of the Captaincy. During this period, Bento Maciel Parente made an attempt to take the captaincy for himself by force, but facing resistance by Pedro Teixeira, left for Maranhão. However, Parente is later given the position by the Governor of Brazil, and immediately gave orders for Teixeira to leave and lead another expedition against the natives. [7]
In 1623, he commanded a large-scale operation to destroy the Dutch fort of Mariocai, where he and Bento Maciel Parente raised the fort of Santo Antônio to protect the surrounding area against foreign incursions, the settlement around the fort would later be known as the town of Gurupá. [8]
He also lead several more campaigns and expeditions in the Amazon defeating the Dutch in their forts of Orange and Nassau, both in the Xingu River, and on 23 May 1625 assaulted the shared Dutch and English fortress of Mandiatuba(Maniutuba?) on the Xingu River, facing the forces of Dutch commander Nicolau Ouaden, who briefly fled to the Island of Tucujus where he and the English commander Philip Pursell, both of whom were killed by Teixeira's forces in Tucujus, in the same month he stops a new attempt by the Dutch to occupy the islands in the Amazon Delta and on 21 October 1625 he defeated the Dutch in the fort of Taurege(Tourege/Torrego), expelling the Dutch from their holdings in the Amazon basin. [2] [3] [8]
In 1626, Manuel de Sousa d'Eça, Capitão-Mor of Pará, ordered Pedro Teixeira to procure native slaves. Teixeira left Belém with 26 soldiers and a Capuchin friar, visiting two native villages, one of Tapuyusús Indians which he bribed, and another of Tapajós Indians, who refused to trade men for goods. [9]
In September 1629, Teixeira besieged the English Fort of Taurege, where he defeated two enemy sorties and on 24 October 1629 the help that was sent to relieved the fort's forces, with the garrison led by James Pursell surrendering in the same day and being sent to Belém. This earned a reprisal on 26 October 1629, led by the English Captain, Roger North, who attacked Teixeira in the Fort of Santo Antônio in Gurupá, where Teixeira triumphed and rebuked the English assault, North, defeated left to found the fort of Camaú. [2] [3] [9]
In 1637, two Franciscan friars, André de Toledo and Domingos de La Brieba, under threats from nearby natives, abandoned their mission on the Amazon River and, with six soldiers, paddled a canoe up the entire length of the river to the Portuguese settlement of Gurupá, from where they left to Belém, and later to São Luís. [3]
Their arrival led the Portuguese to seriously consider an expedition against the current of the Amazon River. [10] Consequently, the governor of Maranhão, Jácome Raimundo de Noronha, commissioned an expedition with the goal of discovering the river all the way to Quito, learning the best places to establish fortifications, securing through the good conduct of the expeditionaries and small gifts the peace and friendship of the indigenous tribes, and founding a settlement to mark the limit, in the Amazon, of Portuguese control. And so did Pedro Teixeira. [3]
On 25 July 1637 Pedro Teixeira's fleet arrived in Guajará, from where it left to Cametá to secure more crewmates and ships, with everything ready Teixeira left on 28 October 1637, [3] his expedition consisted of 47 large canoes, with 70 soldiers, a few clergymen, and 1,200 Natives, his guide was the friar Domingos de La Brieba. [10]
In January 1638, the expedition found the mouth of the Rio Negro, and on 3 July 1638 the mouth of the Napo River, finally reaching the Quijos river on 15 August 1638, crossing the Spanish settlement of Baeza, and from there arrived in Quito in September 1638. [3]
Completed the initial journey, on 16 February 1639, Teixeira and his expedition left Quito for Belém. Six months later, on 16 August 1639, they founded the settlement of Franciscana, whose name was chosen in honor of the Franciscan friars whose initial journey served as the impetus for Teixeira's expedition, on the River Ouro (theorized to be the Aguarico River). [3] Of Franciscana little remains to this day, and the Portuguese didn't manage to keep that border, with it later being fixed on the Javary River. [10]
Teixeira's expedition arrived back in the city of Belém on 12 December 1639, for his merits he was promoted to Capitão-Mor. He accepted the post of governor of Pará on 28 February 1640, a position in which he would remain in for a year and three months, until 26 May 1641. He died on 4 July 1641. [3] His ashes rest on the Belém Metropolitan Cathedral in the city of Belém. [11]
Teixeira's grand expedition and the founding of the settlement of Franciscana to mark the limit between the Portuguese and Spanish Crown would be used extensively by the Portuguese to sustain their claims to Upper Amazonas, including in the negotiations for the Treaty of Madrid, over a hundred years afterwards. [10]
On 10 December 2009, the Brazilian Senate made a tribute to Pedro Teixeira, celebrating the 370 years since Teixeira's Amazon Expedition. [5]
Amazonas is a state of Brazil, located in the North Region in the north-western corner of the country. It is the largest Brazilian state by area and the ninth-largest country subdivision in the world. It is the largest country subdivision in South America, being greater than the areas of Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay combined. Neighbouring states are Roraima, Pará, Mato Grosso, Rondônia, and Acre. It also borders the nations of Peru, Colombia and Venezuela. This includes the Departments of Amazonas, Vaupés and Guainía in Colombia, as well as the Amazonas state in Venezuela, and the Loreto Region in Peru.
Pará is a state of Brazil, located in northern Brazil and traversed by the lower Amazon River. It borders the Brazilian states of Amapá, Maranhão, Tocantins, Mato Grosso, Amazonas and Roraima. To the northwest are the borders of Guyana and Suriname, to the northeast of Pará is the Atlantic Ocean. The capital and largest city is Belém, which is located at the Marajó bay, near the estuary of the Amazon river. The state, which is home to 4.1% of the Brazilian population, is responsible for just 2.2% of the Brazilian GDP.
Belém, often called Belém of Pará, is the capital and largest city of the state of Pará in the north of Brazil. It is the gateway to the Amazon River with a busy port, airport, and bus/coach station. Belém lies approximately 100 km upriver from the Atlantic Ocean, on the Pará River, which is part of the greater Amazon River system, separated from the larger part of the Amazon delta by Ilha de Marajó. With an estimated population of 1,303,403 people — or 2,491,052, considering its metropolitan area — it is the 12th most populous city in Brazil, as well as the 16th by economic relevance. It is the second largest in the North Region, second only to Manaus, in the state of Amazonas.
The Captaincies of Brazil were captaincies of the Portuguese Empire, administrative divisions and hereditary fiefs of Portugal in the colony of Terra de Santa Cruz, later called Brazil, on the Atlantic coast of northeastern South America. Each was granted to a single donee, a Portuguese nobleman who was given the title captain General.
Ilha Grande do Gurupá is a large river island of the Amazon River delta. It lies in the Brazilian state of Pará, west of Marajó and near the confluence of the Amazon and the Xingu. The island has an area of 4,864 square kilometres (1,878 sq mi).
A donatary captain was a Portuguese colonial official to whom the Crown granted jurisdiction, rights, and revenues over some colonial territory. The recipients of these grants were called donatários (donataries), because they had been given the grant as a doação (donation) by the king, often as a reward for service.
This is a timeline of Amazon history, which dates back at least 11,000 years ago, when humans left indications of their presence in Caverna da Pedra Pintada.
Gurupá or Santo Antonio de Gurupá is a municipality on the Amazon River in state of Pará, northern Brazil located near the world's largest river island, Marajó, 300 km upstream from the upper mouth of the river on the Atlantic coast.
Francisco Caldeira Castelo Branco (1566–1619) was a Portuguese explorer and colonial administrator. He is noted as the founder of the city of Belém, capital of Pará, Brazil, on 12 January 1616. Caldeira served as the first Governor General of the Captaincy of Grão-Pará.
The State of Maranhão was the northern of two 17–18th century administrative divisions of the colonial Portuguese Empire in South America.
The History of Belém refers to the history of this Brazilian municipality in the Northern Region of the country, the capital of the state of Pará, which had its origins in the 17th century in the indigenous region of Mairi, located 160 km from the equator.
Francisco Xavier de Mendonça Furtado (1701–1769) served in Portugal's armed services rising in rank from soldier to sea-captain, then became a colonial governor in Brazil, and finally Secretary of State of the Navy and Foreign Dominions in the Portuguese government. His major achievements included the extension of Portugal's colonial settlement in South America westward along the Amazon basin and the carrying out of economic and social reforms according to policies established in Lisbon.
The Fort of Santo Antônio de Gurupá, located in the current-day city of Gurupá, was a Portuguese military fortification in the 17th and 18th centuries, being actively occupied by the Brazilian military as recently as 1958.
The Fort of Taurege, also known as Fort of Taurege River, Fort of Torrego, Fort of Tourege, Fort of Torrejo, and Fort of Maracapuru, was a colonial era Amazonian fort located in the confluence of the Taurege River and the Amazon Delta, possibly in the Island of Tucujus.
Feliz Lusitânia, now known as Conjunto Arquitetônico e Paisagístico Feliz Lusitânia or Complexo Turístico Feliz Lusitânia, was a Portuguese colonial settlement created in 1616 by Captain Francisco Caldeira Castelo Branco in the then Conquista do Pará, at the time of the overseas province of Colonial Brazil, originating the Pará municipality of Belém. Feliz Lusitânia is the historical center of this municipality, located in the district of Cidade Velha, a port and tourist area restored in 2002 by the Government of the State of Pará, when the city was going through a process of historical urban decay due to verticalization.
Cidade Velha, initially called Mairi, Cidade or Sé neighborhood, is a historic area of the capital of Pará, Belém, founded in the 1620s. It is the first and oldest neighborhood in the city, originated from the Portuguese colonial settlement Feliz Lusitânia and the construction of the wooden fortress Forte do Presépio, at the mouth of the Piry creek, by Portuguese Captain-Mor Francisco Caldeira Castelo Branco, on January 12, 1616. He had the goal of occupying the Conquista do Pará in the then Captaincy of Maranhão, ensuring the dominance of the region and the drogas do sertão.
Conquista do Pará, also called the Império das Amazonas, now the Brazilian state of Pará, was an indigenous territory transformed into Portuguese colonial territory in 1615 by the military man and nobleman Alexandre de Moura, at the beginning of the colonization of the Amazon and conquest of the Amazon River. It was located in the then Captaincy of Maranhão (1534-1621).
The Tupinambá Uprising (1617-1621), also called the Tupinambá Revolt, took place on January 13, 1618, and was led by the tuxaua (cacique) Cabelo de Velha, who gathered several native indigenous groups from the busy Mairi region to fight against the Portuguese, due to the abuses committed by these colonizers when they exploited the indigenous labor force in the Conquest of Pará. This movement was one of a series of uprisings that took place in the region between 1617 and 1619. The disputes culminated in the attack in January 1619 by the Tupinambá on the Presépio Fort, located on the shores of Guajará Bay.
The history of Amazonas is the result of treaties, religious missions and a few indigenous rebellions in the Amazon territory. Initially, under the Treaty of Tordesillas, the site belonged to the Spanish Kingdom, but was later annexed by the Portuguese Crown. The state's international borders, undefined after Brazil's independence in 1822, were demarcated during the signing of the Treaty of Bogotá. Archaeological research suggests past occupations by Paleo-Indian hunter-gatherer groups, dated around 11,200 years before the present day.