After this initial ceremony, the remaining eighty-three children were baptized in groups. Then came the next solemnity:
Governor Mem de Sá commanded, “Let Arm of Iron, who is also called Paulo, step forward.”
A murmur rose among the crowd, and heads twisted round toward the doorway. Several people cried greetings to the man, who’d been waiting at the back of the church. The crowd parted to let him through and he walked slowly between them, nodding in recognition of those who were his friends. He had been an honored warrior at the malocas of Bloated Toad.
The fathers considered Arm of Iron a remarkable man. Among Bloated Toad’s people, he had exchanged his wooden club for a double-bladed battle-ax taken from a slain Portuguese; his deadly skill with this weapon had earned him the name Arm of Iron. But Governor de Sá’s soldiers had driven him to the aldeia, a beaten savage, fearing for his life. He refused food and lay in his hammock — waiting for death, other Tupinambá said. The fathers had set a watch over him, but one night at the end of his first week with them, when his guards slept, he had left his hammock; and the next morning, when the fathers went for early Mass, there, asleep before the altar, was Arm of Iron.
“I have spoken with your God — the God of Governor Mem de Sá,” he’d announced, when he awakened and saw the black-robed men around him. “He wants me, too.”
Now Paulo greeted the governors: “Judge of my people, I bow my head to you as one who makes peace. I am happy to be here.”
“Arm of Iron,” said Mem de Sá, purposely using the Tupinambá name, “you have witnessed the happiness of these children accepted into the house of His Divine Majesty.”
Arm of Iron looked at the children. “They march with the Great Spirit in their hearts.”
“And Arm of Iron? With whom does he march?”
“With Jesus. Obedient to His command.”
“God be praised,” the governor said. “You are washed clean, your past corruption cleansed and forgiven.”
“I wish no more, my Lord-Governor,” Paulo said.
“Here, in this aldeia, Arm of Iron will be my bailiff — one who sees that my laws are obeyed.”
Two aides to the governor stepped up, their arms laden with garments, which Mem de Sá then presented to Arm of Iron.
“These will reflect the dignity of the office you have been given,” the governor said, and helped Arm of Iron don a green doublet. Next, Mem de Sá took a brown cloak from one of his aides and draped it around the Tupinambá’s shoulders; then he gave him a hat trimmed with yellow taffeta. There was also a linen shirt and brown breeches, but these the aides simply held aloft to exhibit to the crowd.
Mem de Sá accepted a staff from one of his aides, a length of burnished bronze inlaid with cheap jewels. “Here is the symbol of my authority, by which all will know you as the bailiff of this aldeia.” Mem de Sá raised the staff high enough so that those in the back could see. “He who carries this speaks with the voice of the governor; you must obey him.”
“We will! We will!” roared the crowd.
“When he tells you to carry out the wishes of the fathers, heed him. When he tells you to perform the labor that makes better Christians of you, obey.”
“We will!”
The governor then kissed the staff of office and handed it to Paulo. “Go with God, my servant,” Mem de Sá said.
The governor went to sit on the bench with his officers and officials, Paulo moved to one side, and Padre Inácio now led the mission choir in their hymns.
Mem de Sá sat with his eyes closed in great pleasure: There was nothing so soothing to him as the angelic voices of the young converts, and often on Sundays he would come to the mission church in preference to the Sáo Salvador cathedral.
After the singing, the church was cleared of all but the governor’s party and the Jesuits; they stood to one side as ten natives and three black slaves — two from south of the river Zaire, one from the Guinea coast — made preparations for them to dine. The slaves were among nine blacks owned by the Jesuits at the Bahia. In the time of Tomé de Sousa, Padre Nóbrega had written to King João, asking for slaves “to work our garden and supply our table, for otherwise we would starve, there being no concept of labor among the natives.”
The padres continued to distinguish between the blacks, hundreds of whom were coming every month to the anchorages of the Bahia and Pernambuco, and the natives. The Africans had always been slaves and had both the constitution and the discipline for industrious toil; the Tupinambá, Tupiniquin, and all the other tribes of Brazil had neither.
But thousands of natives, taken legally or illegally, did slave on the plantations, for a peça from Africa still was much more expensive than a forest savage. Although Governor de Sá was not unsympathetic to the need for labor in the cane fields, he reminded his colonists that Lisbon’s Board of Conscience and Order clearly defined those who could be taken: natives who sold themselves or their children into slavery for reasons of dire need; natives who practiced cannibalism; natives rescued or ransomed from “places of slaughter”; and, certainly, natives who took up arms against the Portuguese.
The Jesuits were making every effort to instill in the natives a sense of discipline, obedience, and industry. When this was accomplished, the natives would be hired out from the aldeias to work on the plantations. But that day still seemed far off.
During the meal in the church building, the governor spoke to Inácio, who sat opposite him, and again referred to the Tupiniquin of Porto Seguro, and the neighboring captaincy of Ilheus. “The murders they have committed prove how little they respect the Portuguese,” he said. “And how little they fear the savior you so lovingly offered them.”
“There are many thousands, Governor. In four days’ journey north of Porto Seguro, I counted more than sixty malocas.”
“And I have the Tupinambá!” Mem de Sá pronounced, with unusual excitement. “Those subdued around this bay wait happily for a place in an aldeia. Punish the Tupiniquin and they will join us, too, as many as our ships can hold. I want you to come with us, Padre Inácio — with the fleet that sails for Porto Seguro. Padre Nóbrega has no objection.”
“Then I will go,” Inácio said.
“Let the Tupiniquin see God’s messenger whom they mocked,” the governor added, with passion.
Two weeks later, in mid-July 1559, in the lee of the heights of São Salvador, marinheiros were just beginning to take in the anchors of Governor Mem de Sá’s flagship, Nossa Senhora dos Remédios. Already six vessels of the coastal fleet, with supplies for a long campaign and their decks crowded with Tupinambá warriors now in the service of His Majesty Dom Sebastião, were over the horizon bound for Porto Seguro and nearby Ilheus, which was under siege by savages.
Padre Inácio, his slender arms folded across his chest, leaned against a bulkhead in the flagship’s cabin as the governor and his military commander, Vasco Rodrigues de Caldas, reprimanded the young man who was the cause of this delay: Tomás Cavalcanti.
Inácio had seen his cousin for the first time just before this confrontation, when the men sent to find him returned with Tomás and four other Pernambucans in the ship’s boat. Tomás bore a strong resemblance to Nicolau; he was sturdily built and of medium height, with green-flecked eyes and sunburnt features. But there was a special arrogance about him, immediately apparent in his manner when he’d come aboard Nossa Senhora dos Remédios: Totally unabashed at having delayed the governor, and obviously unafraid of the consequences, he’d swung over the bulwarks, joking with his escort, and swaggered over to Mem de Sá’s cabin.
“They said you’d be here,” he’d greeted Inácio on the quarterdeck. “Certainly, I told them, a fine presence; it’s good for our governor to see a saint among the Cavalcantis.”
Before Inácio could respond, Tomás had entered the cabin, and Inácio had followed. Standing before Mem de Sá and de Caldas, Tomás lost some of his bravado, but his steady gaze and easy stance showed him to be far less intimidated
than a young man might be in this situation.
“Capitão Cavalcanti,” Mem de Sá said bitingly, though Tomás held no official rank as leader of thirty men from Pernambuco, “we would have sailed hours ago.”
“Forgive me, Excellency . . . it was unavoidable.”
Mem de Sá glared at him. “Unavoidable, was it? Detaining the governor and the commander of this expedition — this you could not avoid?”
“My men have had a hard journey, Excellency, a long campaign through the backlands. Terrible.”
“My campaign has not begun. Delayed these hours because of you.”
“Yes, Excellency, and I regret it. But we walked every league from Olinda to the Bahia.”
Tomás Cavalcanti had marched down the coast in pursuit of runaway slaves, wandering into the backlands until he’d led his men so far south that they’d come on to São Salvador, from where they’d wanted to ship back to Olinda. But Governor de Sá had interviewed them and had declared that they were to serve with him for a period: “A fine opportunity to remind them and those who sent them south that they are part of His Majesty’s empire,” he’d confided to de Caldas.
“Surely, Cavalcanti, and you will return,” Mem de Sá was now saying to Tomás, “when you have helped me pacify the Tupiniquin.”
“A great honor” — Tomás smiled at Rodrigues de Caldas — “to march with you, my lord and knight.”
De Caldas, a big, muscular man with a remorseless look about him, observed Tomás sourly. A veteran of the wars against the Tupinambá and the bloody punishment of the Caeté to the north, de Caldas was not impressed by this son of a wealthy Pernambucan planter, for whom the governor showed such patience. De Caldas did not expect much of this cocky mazombo — the term for those born of Portuguese parents in Brazil, totally lacking the refinements and traditions of old Portugal.
“If you value this commission so much,” the governor snapped, “why weren’t you aboard last night, with the rest of the men?”
Tomás turned to look at Inácio, and when he did not reply immediately, de Caldas said coldly, “We are waiting, Senhor Cavalcanti, to hear what detained you.”
“Oh, no, Commander, it wasn’t what you think!” he said. Then, to the governor: “Oh, Excellency, how I thank fate for leading me here.”
Mem de Sá’s stern expression began to relax.
“Governor de Sá, you’ve given me the victor’s prize, even before I raised my sword once for you.”
Now the governor smiled openly. “Tomás Cavalcanti, which one?” he asked, to the complete bafflement of Inácio and de Caldas.
“Theresa Dias!” Tomás cried. “All night I sat outside the window of Dom Almeida’s house waiting for but one glimpse of her.”
“And this was granted?”
“Yes, Governor — at dawn, with the soft light upon that loveliest of faces. Oh, forgive me, Excellency, but for such a sight, a man must risk much.”
De Caldas had a look of incredulity on his face: He had sent his men to the dens of whores and thieves to fetch this rascal, certainly not to the house of Dom Almeida, a most respected councilman of São Salvador.
Mem de Sá noticed his commander’s impatience and grew stern again. “This is no excuse to delay the fleet. Tomás Cavalcanti, take care that you follow your duty, not your heart!” From his tone, it was clear to the others that the governor had no intention of going beyond this mild rebuke. Theresa Dias, the king’s “daughter,” was a plump but fair-countenanced girl, one of a group of orphans sent to the Bahia at royal expense. Abandoned on the doorstep of a convent in Coimbra, Theresa had been raised by the nuns and was of sound morals and firm conviction. Mem de Sá had placed her under the protection of Dom Almeida, until such time as a suitor the governor approved came forward to beg his permission to marry her.
Mem de Sá spoke to lnácio. “I introduced your cousin, Padre, to one of the orphan girls the king has sent. It seems Tomás has an interest in the child.”
Tomás smiled at Inácio. “Oh, Padre, what a rose she is! What a flower for any man who deserves her!”
Commander Rodrigues de Caldas made a low, angry noise, nodded at the governor, and left the cabin.
Two weeks later, on July 30, 1559, Padre Inácio stood with Governor de Sá, Commander de Caldas, and a group of officers on a hill twenty miles south of the settlement of Ilheus. It was 4:00 a.m., but the sky was aglow, for along the opposite hills and in the valleys between, the forest burned.
A solid wall of fire extended for a mile along those hills, and fanned by a stiff breeze, it was burning deep into the lands beyond, pouring rivers of flame along the valleys to scorch the earth where the first Tupiniquin to face Governor de Sá’s force had once hunted and fished.
Blasts of hot air reached the hill where Inácio stood. The light from the fire storm brought an eerie color to the men gathered there, spectators to the furies they’d set in action by firing the forest at the malocas they’d attacked four hours ago.
Only the morning before, they’d reached an anchorage convenient to the town of Ilheus, where planters from the captaincy’s five engenhos had taken refuge with the settlers. Since the murder of two colonists by the Tupiniquin, these families, less than one hundred people, had not ventured out of the town, and had been reduced to surviving on oranges and a handful of manioc daily. The landing of Mem de Sá, with Portuguese soldiers and a thousand Tupinambá from the Bahia, had itself been sufficient to send the Tupiniquin besieging Ilheus fleeing into the forest.
The governor immediately marched his men to Tupiniquin malocas twenty miles beyond Ilheus, where the settlers said they would find the murderers of the two planters.
They’d sighted the village on a hill opposite the one on which the governor and his officers were now standing, and, close to midnight, had stormed through the five malocas they found, slaying every man, woman, and child they caught.
For Inácio, the memory of the devastation brought to the malocas of his own Tupiniquin had been inescapable. But what was happening this night was different, he’d told himself: These Tupiniquin had brought upon themselves a divine justice for their long and stubborn refusal to abandon their pagan ways. God help them! Inácio had prayed. Through their suffering and scourging, may they be compelled to accept His Word and brought to an understanding of justice and salvation!
But these Tupiniquin were not ready for salvation. When dawn came on July 30, some who had been able to flee into the forest during the attack followed the trails of blood that led back to their village, and beheld their smoldering malocas and the blackened, scorched bodies of their families.
“Hear us, O Voice of the Spirits, this day of our sorrow!” the sole surviving elder cried out in the presence of seven warriors who’d returned to the blasted clearing. “O ancestors, who rest in Land of the Grandfather, see your children this day!”
The elder had little to offer beyond these anguished appeals as he stumbled through the ruin. Then he stopped and examined the faces of the men with him, and detected the thirst he himself felt for the blood of the Portuguese.
“Must we lie in our hammocks like the old and the sick and wait for death?” many asked, and the answer was obvious: From every maloca within two days’ march of Ilheus, the Tupiniquin rose to drive the Long Hairs into the Bluewater from whence they had come.
Governor de Sá and his troops were waiting for them, warned by Tupinambá scouts patrolling the forest, and hundreds were slain in ambushes on the approach to the settlement. But a second Tupiniquin advance was working its way through a low, wooded range that lay adjacent to the shore. Here were the warriors from sixteen villages, some twelve hundred men and boys in all, confident that their force would march over the huts and houses of the Long Hairs at Ilheus.
They were trapped between those hills and the sea — driven onto the long stretches of beach to make their stand against the Portuguese and the Tupinambá. The battle raged from dawn till dusk. The ranks of the Tupiniquin were decimated by cann
on fire from two ships maneuvering offshore, and their enemies on land stormed down the hills to finish off those who remained, pressing them farther and farther back, until Tupiniquin stood up to their shoulders in the surf laboring to swing their clubs against the men who waded after them with sword and pike.
Not one of the twelve hundred Tupiniquin survived. When Mem de Sá came to inspect the scene of battle toward sunset, he walked the beach for a distance of a mile, moving very slowly, for hundreds of Tupiniquin lay along his path, their blood mingling with the water that foamed up to the white sand.
By rising against the Portuguese, these Tupiniquin had given His Excellency, Governor Mem de Sá, just cause to exterminate their nation.
Through the first swift weeks of the campaign against the Tupiniquin, Inácio had sought to be friendly toward his cousin, and Tomás had been responsive to his inquiries about Engenho Santo Tomás and its people. But even when he spoke about them, Tomás Cavalcanti frightened Inácio, for the padre had rarely heard expressed such hatred and contempt for the natives.
The ill-mannered youth he’d first met at Nicolau’s stockade was twenty-two now, as harsh-tempered and abrasive as his father. Indeed, Tomás’s reports had revealed Nicolau to be as unforgiving as Inácio had known him, and as fully abandoned to the harlots of his house. More so, Inácio reasoned, for Helena was dead. “Taken by illness this past year, cousin,” Tomás had told him. “As surely a victim of this land as if slain by the savages.” Clearly Tomás had been reluctant to talk about his mother, and, after accepting Inácio’s condolences, had changed the subject to the engenho itself
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