Brazil

by Errol Lincoln Uys

  The defeat at the Bahia had not depressed Maurits. When the ships of his retreating force hove to behind the reef at Recife, he had reminded his commanders: “Pernambuco and five captaincies to the north and south of it have been won from the Portuguese — more than enough, gentlemen, for the foundation of New Holland.”

  On June 29, 1638, the feast day of St. Peter and St. Paul, a group of seven Paulistas stood outside the câmara as a religious procession passed the municipal building, one of the few two-storied structures in town. The main floor was reserved for council meetings, and there was also a jail, from the barred windows of which prisoners were appealing in vain to the men in front of the câmara for release on this holy day. But the men were listening raptly instead to Captain-Major Raposo Tavares denounce the fathers of the Company of Jesus:

  “How humbly and piously they walk today with those of St. Francis and St. Benedict. But when they return to their house, they’ll weep with indignation. They’ll fall on their knees and beg the Lord, God of us all, to afflict us with a thousand miseries.”

  Amador and Ishmael Pinheiro — the latter prosperously attired and grown even fatter — were standing with the group, all of whom nodded in agreement with the words of the man who had led so many raids against the Jesuit reductions.

  Amador was twenty-four. He had more than fulfilled Bernardo da Silva’s prediction that this last son of his would be forever bound to the sertão. Amador had long ago lost his father’s silver spoon, and with it, a serious desire to be the equal of the sons of Portugal. He cared nothing for caste and privilege; rather, he saw himself as a mameluco, enjoying the freedom of the sertão, where the only decrees were the natural laws of survival.

  His appearance had changed little since boyhood: He was still short and thickset and bore the scars of the pox he’d had as a child. The relentless voyaging into the sertão, hardening him physically and spiritually, had wrought a change: Let him move silently between the trees, with the tall bow he often favored over a musket, and here was a warrior, a hunter of man and beast.

  When the procession had passed them, Raposo Tavares continued: “The Jesuits tell our governor that I’m a bandit who’s stolen sixty thousand Carijó from their protection. ‘Tavares and the men of São Paulo must be scourged by savages bearing muskets,’ they plead at the council of Madrid. Sixty thousand Carijó!” Raposo Tavares snorted. “With that horde of natives, I’d be even wealthier than Correia de Sá, with his great lands and his weighhouse!”

  Salvador Correia de Sá e Benavides was the governor of Rio de Janeiro. His grandfather had been a nephew of the great lawgiver Mem de Sá, who’d led the slaughter of the coastal Tupiniquin and Tupinambá three-quarters of a century before. Though subordinate to the governor-general of Brazil at the Bahia, Correia de Sá exercised broad powers over the lower group of captaincies, including São Vicente, in which São Paulo was located. Correia de Sá had obtained a twenty-year monopoly on the weighing and warehousing of every grain of sugar produced in his captaincy.

  “Our governor must surely know that I’m not a rich man — only one, as God sees me, who’s consumed with love for the land of my father, dear Portugal,” Raposo Tavares continued.

  “Your love of Portugal wouldn’t impress him,” Ishmael Pinheiro said.

  The meaning of Ishmael’s remark was clear to everyone present. Correia de Sá’s mother was Spanish, a daughter of the governor of Cadiz, where Correia de Sá was born. His father, Martim, had been governor of Rio de Janeiro before him, and as a young man, Correia de Sá had spent seven years in the Spanish colonies to the west of São Paulo. He had married a wealthy Creole heiress from the viceroyalty of Peru and gained firsthand knowledge of the vast Spanish holdings. The Paulistas had hoped for support and sympathy from Correia de Sá; but he favored the Jesuits and, too, was said to share their opinion that the Paulistas were a bandit rabble.

  Then Amador spoke up:

  “Why do the Jesuits go to Madrid to plead for muskets? Their savages are armed well enough already.” He was thinking of the bandeira of 1637 in which the black robes and their musketeers had chased him for ten days.

  “The Jesuits will tell Madrid what Madrid wants to hear,” Raposo Tavares replied to Amador’s question. “The lands south of São Paulo must be held for Spain. Every league won from the savages by the men of São Paulo, must become the property of Castile. They’ll not ask for a few muskets more but for enough weapons to arm regiments of Carijó to protect the realm of His Spanish Majesty.”

  “Our governor supports the black robes at a time when half of Brazil, every captaincy from Maranhão, in the north, to the boundary of the Bahia, is already lost to the Dutch?”

  A man who’d been quiet until now broke into the discussion: “Dom Correia’s support for the Company of Jesus is personal, senhores. He’s an honest and devout man.” He was José Maria de Novais. He had accompanied many slave-raiding bandeiras and, at one time or another, had fought alongside every man here; today he was less active as slaver, owning a thousand cattle and the best wheat fields in the district, and was a member of the câmara of São Paulo. “It would be wrong to question his loyalty to the colony and Portugal,” José Maria continued. “Every day he prays for deliverance from the heretic in the north.”

  “And while he meditates, the guns of the Dutch grow louder?” Raposo Tavares said.

  “You speak boldly, Captain-Major, but what do you know of Dutch guns?” asked José Maria. “In this struggle, my friend, what have the men of São Paulo done to help Portugal? Show me a soldier of São Paulo who stood with our colonists of Pernambuco against the invader. Where were we this past April when the Dutch threatened the Bahia? Others have fought the great battles of this land.”

  “And lost,” Raposo Tavares said.

  “Yes, Captain-Major, a terrible loss, through treason and treachery, but Correia de Sá believes we can win back our lands from the Dutch,” José Maria said.

  José Maria was forty, the same age as Raposo Tavares, but he appeared older than the captain-major, who had been little changed by this decade of slave-raiding. Raposo Tavares was tall and straight-backed, his manner eager, confident, almost youthful. José Maria was of medium build, his shoulders slightly stooped, his neatly trimmed beard and his hair flecked with gray.

  “Without aid from Lisbon and Madrid, the Dutch won’t be expelled,” Raposo Tavares said.

  “Certainly, but if help does come, we must join the struggle. For ten years we’ve turned our backs on the other captaincies, wandering into the sertão and worrying about the Spaniard. Isn’t it time we changed this?”

  Raposo Tavares scowled. “Do you speak for yourself, José Maria, or Dom Correia de Sá?”

  “Both.” José Maria had recently returned from Rio de Janeiro. “He told you to raise this issue?”

  “He did.”

  “What does Dom Correia de Sá expect of us?”

  “A fleet will come from Portugal next year. He wants a Paulista company ready to embark with it for Pernambuco.”

  “Ah, yes, we’re the king’s servants,” Ishmael Pinheiro said quietly. “This we know, José Maria, but what reward will the king offer for the expense of raising such a company?”

  “A full and free pardon for any accused by the Jesuits.”

  Some of the men laughed, but José Maria silenced them: “There’s word in Rio de Janeiro that the leaders of the bandeiras are to be transported to Lisbon in chains.”

  “It’s true,” Raposo Tavares said. “The Jesuits plead for our excommunication. But tell me, José Maria, since you speak for the governor: With his fondness for the Company of Jesus, how can it be that he’d consider pardoning a man they say has enslaved sixty thousand Carijó?”

  “Dom Correia believes that if you raise a company to fight the Dutch, many others will follow your example.”

  Amador laughed at this notion.

  “Your father knew these black robes well,” the captain-major said to him, “and so did y
our grandfather Marcos. Both could have told you how unforgiving these soldiers of the Lord can be. A pardon from the governor may be a salvation we can’t dismiss.”

  Raposo Tavares accepted Governor Correia de Sá’s offer of clemency and raised a company of Paulistas for an army that would fight the Dutch at Pernambuco — only 150 men, many of whom, such as Amador, had volunteered out of personal loyalty to the captain-major. The armada dispatched from Spain to assist the colonists arrived at the Bahia in January 1639. Sickness and poor leadership had plagued the expedition; three thousand men had died from disease before reaching Brazil, and months were devoted to rebuilding the force.

  On August 5, 1639, the Paulistas received orders to proceed down the Serra do Mar to Santos for embarkation in a vessel that would take them to the armada at the Bahia. A week later, on the eve of the contingent’s departure from São Paulo, Amador invited his old comrade Valentim Ramalho and his father and the trader Ishmael Pinheiro to the da Silva house for a farewell festa.

  Also gathered in the lofty central room of the homestead were Amador’s mother, Rosa Flôres, and his half-brothers, Braz and Domingos, and their families. Braz, a son of Tenente Bernardo’s first wife, was a man in his sixties; Domingos was twelve years younger. They lived here with their families, never participating in the bandeiras.

  The da Silva homestead, some thirty miles northwest of São Paulo, was a one-storied whitewashed building made of tightly packed clay, its rammed earth walls two feet thick and eighteen feet high. In the front were two large rooms, with tall framed windows, on either side of a spacious verandah. Braz and Domingos and their wives occupied these rooms.

  From the verandah, a heavy oak door, nine feet high, opened into the central room, where the da Silvas and their guests were gathered. Four rooms led off this open area — one for Rosa Flôres, another for the young boys of the house, a third for the girls, and the fourth a work area where the women and their slaves spent the days combing wool and cotton, spinning, weaving, and sewing.

  There was no kitchen; the slaves prepared the meals beyond the back verandah at open fires and a clay oven.

  One particularly distinctive feature of the house was its roof, made with half-round reddish tiles like those seen in Portugal and designed like a pagoda, with sloping sides that curved gracefully and came to a point in the center of the house, twenty-four feet above the floor.

  When the party assembled to bid farewell to Amador had finished eating, the men stayed at the table and the women moved to a corner of the room where they sat or stood near a hammock in which the widow Rosa Flôres reclined. Two of them were native girls, the concubines of Amador. And here, too, was Maria Ramalho, who’d been invited by Rosa Flôres.

  Maria was twenty-seven years old now and still unmarried, her ugly features having deterred the few prospects her father had lured to his house. Her ardor for Amador remained strong, and she persistently offered appeals for a miracle that would open his eyes to the love she had for him.

  As Amador sat at the table with the other men, he could sense that Maria Ramalho’s gaze was upon him.

  Amador had inherited a portion of his father’s lands and slaves and had added to this with the profits of his own raids and smuggling, but he had no desire to settle down, especially with Maria Ramalho. He was now the father of two daughters and a son. Amador slept with the Carijó and the Tupiniquin when he was home, but showed little affection for his children.

  It was not that he was incapable of love. Toward his mother, he was openly adoring. He worshipped Rosa Flôres. Only one discordant note marred the relationship between Amador and his mother: Rosa Flôres’s support for Maria Ramalho.

  “She loves you with all her heart,” his mother had said many times, “And Maria is promised a good dowry.”

  Maria’s father, Vasco Ramalho, who’d once led Bernardo da Silva’s own militia, still lived with his family on lands adjoining the da Silva holding, but he no longer marched with the bandeiras. Three years before, he had located gold in a river northeast of São Paulo. His find had made him rich but had soon petered out, as had been the case with every gold strike in these parts. After a year of prospecting elsewhere, Vasco had given up and returned to his lands.

  Amador’s thoughts were interrupted by a familiar cry: “Cachaça! Oh, my friends, more wine!”

  Valentim Ramalho had climbed up on the seat and was waving an empty gourd.

  Amador called to a slave, who went for more liquor.

  “Cachaça!” Valentim shouted. “We must toast our hero!”

  Ishmael Pinheiro challenged this remark: “A hero? Oh, Amador, what will you gain from this foolish venture?”

  Before Amador could respond, Valentim said, “Isn’t his name listed with that of the captain-major and others whom the Jesuits want transported in chains to Lisbon?”

  “Always — The Jesuits,” Ishmael said. “They claim to be founders of São Paulo de Piratininga, but your own ancestors, Valentim— João Ramalho and his great family — were here before Nóbrega and Anchieta. And the Ramalho’s will be here — long after these troublesome priests have been silenced.”

  “Many, many Ramalhos,” Amador interjected, provoking laughter from all, Valentim’s the loudest.

  Shortly before the attack on San Antonio, Valentim had rhapsodied about the sexual delights he was enjoying with two Carijó girls; and every night on the long march of the slave column, he’d made love to both. Upon returning to São Paulo, he asked his father to claim these two Carijó girls as part of his share of captives, and Vasco Ramalho had arranged this gift for his small but hugely amorous son. In ten years the two Carijó had produced twelve children. To that brood were added four more from local girls.

  When the tumult subsided, Amador asked Ishmael: “Why is it foolish to march with Raposo Tavares?”

  “The time isn’t right.”

  “But there’s a great fleet at the Bahia, and more ships preparing to sail from Rio de Janeiro with reinforcements.”

  “And in whose cause? For the king of Spain, Amador — not for Portugal.”

  “Raposo Tavares believes that a change will come.”

  “Yes, Amador, and so do many others. If they’re from Lisbon they talk of dissent against Spain. Talk, talk, talk. For years there’s been nothing but talk. So it will always be. The Portugal that once was is no longer. Our great empire of India is in ruin, the triumphs of Afonso de Albuquerque lost. Our old conquests of Africa are threatened by these same Dutch, our Brazil broken —”

  “By Portuguese Jews in Amsterdam,” Braz da Silva suddenly interrupted. Braz was typical of many who saw the Jews as the cause of all the troubles that had beset Portugal. That Ishmael Pinheiro was the son of a New Christian, and a known sympathizer with Jews, did not deter him. “The Jews gave Pernambuco to the Dutch. They were ready to open the gates of Salvador.”

  “Always — the Jesuits,” Ishmael said, repeating his earlier words and adding: “And the Jew. Yes, Braz, and it was also the Jew, with his gold and commerce, who opened the trade of the East when the conquest was made. The Jew who built the mills and sold the sugar of Pernambuco.”

  Braz, whose pale brown features were boorish and vacant, was stymied by this retort.

  “At Madrid, the Holy Office is told that São Paulo is home to a nest of Israelites, who hide from the flames of Redemption,” Ishmael said.

  “There are some.” Braz looked at Valentim and Amador, and found no support in their neutral expressions.

  “There are a few,” Ishmael said, and was silent. Already he’d said more than he should have. Although there was no Holy Office in Brazil, the Visitor had occasionally been sent from Lisbon to examine the faith of the colonists. These roving Inquisitors had not troubled Ishmael, but he’d been reminded of his Jewish descent in other ways. He had expressed interest in election to the câmara, but was informed that such a position was barred to him. He was married by that time to the daughter of an Old Christian family from Santos, but
this failed to influence the electors. Even his children would be barred from holding any office under the Crown or from membership in the Portuguese military Orders of Christ: Aviz and Santiago. He had seriously considered leaving São Paulo for Pernambuco, where the Dutch imposed no restrictions against Jews. But then Vasco Ramalho, whose prospecting expeditions he’d financed, had found gold, and Ishmael stayed.

  Valentim attempted to change the conversation to a less controversial subject, and began to speak enthusiastically about “the bed,” only the third to be seen at São Paulo, carried in sections over the Serra do Mar for a justice of the peace and his wife, and a source of great envy to Valentim. But the atmosphere had been irremediably tainted, and Braz and Domingos left the table.

  Soon afterwards, Amador and Ishmael went outside, leaving Valentim and his father. A taciturn, simple-minded man, the elder Ramalho had taken no part in the conversation, only occasionally nodding or shaking his head; he and Valentim went on drinking cachaça.

  Amador and Ishmael strolled slowly, until they were on a small rise some distance opposite the house.

  “Forget this ridiculous bandeira, Amador,” he said, “these one hundred fifty men who go to challenge the mighty Dutch Company. Instead, go into the sertão and find gold.”

  “Gold? Why gold, Ishmael, when there’s a mountain of emeralds for any man brave enough to believe it exists?”

  “I’m serious, friend. I’ve seen enough evidence of gold to convince me.”

  “So has every other man who searched for it these past hundred years. The only gold of value, Ishmael, comes from the mine of the province of Guiará —Carijó, my friend, easy to collect, easy to sell.”

  “The days of the great bandeiras are past.”

  “The Jesuits make a noise, but the new reductions hold more Carijó than were ever assembled in those places we attacked.”