Brazil -- The Making of a Novel -- Excerpt from Chronology for an Outline

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Chronology (excerpt)

(page 18-23)

1616    Amador Flôres da Silva, born

1616    São Lucas founded/Belém

1618   Ambrósio Fernandes Brandão made first attempt to define or interpret Brazil in Dialogues of the Greatness of Brazil

1621    Simão Cavalcanti, born

1621    Dutch West India Company formed. The 1626-1637 dividends would average between 20 to 50 percent per annum

Creation of the State of Maranhão, after French expelled. (State of Brazil in the south)

Belém had 80 settlers and 50 soldiers

1623    Pedro Cavalcanti, born

1624    Initial capture of Bahia (Salvador) by the Dutch — retaken in 1625 by Luso-Brazilians. (Two more attacks repulsed in 1627)

1627     By now there were 230 sugar mills scattered around the country

Franciscan Friar Vicente do Salvador writes first history of Brazil

1620s    Penetration of lower Amazon valley began

1628     Piet Heyn, commanding the Dutch West India company fleet captures entire homeward bound Mexican flota off Havana, without a shot. This ruined Spanish credit in Europe and yielded a 50 percent dividend to Dutch West India Company shareholders and helped finance a vigorous Dutch trade offensive in Brazil

1628-1629 Bernado and Amador da Silva on Bandeira to Guaira region with 69 Paulistas, 900 mamelucos, 2,000 Indians - 7,000 captives - Bernado dies

Bandeirante attacks on missions increase because of the interruption of African slave trade. Major slave raids till 1648; attacks east of Asunción and up São Francisco valley, later into interior

1630     Dutch capture Recife, Pernambuco and begin conquest of northeast Brazil

1637     Count Maurice of Nassau-Siegen (1604-1679), prince of the House of Orange, perhaps the ablest man in Holland at the time appointed governor

1637-1639 First ascent of Amazon led by Pedro Teixiera of Belém, notorious Indian hunter; reversed route of Orellano (1539) and established Portugal's claim to the Amazon basin. 40 large canoes, 70 soldiers, some priests, 1,200 Indians. Founded Tabatinga, farthest westward claim of Portugal. Return trip took from February to December 1639

1639     Pope Urban VIII's severest censures of Church against anyone who enslaved Indians. Riots in Brazil in response.

1641     By 1641, most of the reductions east of the Uruguay River and in Mato Grosso had been decimated by slave hunters from São Paulo. Jesuits forced to withdraw into area now known as the Missiones. After repeated appeals to the Crown, the missionaries were allowed to arm and train their charges who defeated the Bandeirantes in a major fight near Mborore River in 1641. (In 1648, reopening of slave trade reduced reduction raids.)

1644     Amador and Paulista contingent start guerilla operations against Dutch in Pernambuco

By now the Dutch had expanded their conquest until they controlled nearly 1,000 miles of coast from the mouth of the Amazon to the São Francisco River

Amador da Silva marries Varzea Pinto

1637      Count Maurice of Nassau resigns. His policies left a permanent mark on northern Brazil. Some of the Dutch remained to found families like Wanderley, Rollenberg and Lins. Recife had grown from a village of 150 houses to a bustling port with 2,000 buildings.

1648       Alvares Cavalcanti executed; Simão and Pedro exiled to Angola; Henrietta and girls flee to Bahia

Guerilla war had been waged, in one form or another, for fifteen years but Luso-Brazilians now revolt in earnest against the Dutch. (By 1648, Dutch control reduced to Recife and the area surrounding it.)

1649       Monarch elevated Brazil to status of a principality, and thereafter heir to the throne known as Prince of Brazil

Pedro Cavalcanti dies in exile in Angola

1648-1651 First Battle of Guarapes; Brazilian-born whites, blacks, mulattoes and Indians defeat Dutch. Amador with Paulista contingent (April 19)

1650       Second Battle of Guarapes (February 19.)Dutch defeated. Campaign also extended to Angola, where Dutch had gained a foothold, Salvador Correa de Sa e Benavides, Governor of Rio and Capt-General of Angola, sailed from Guanabara Bay with 2,000 men and recaptured Luanda.

1652       Amador on Bandeira with Raposo Tavares, 6,000 miles from São Paulo to Belém via Madeira and Amazon

1652      Olimpio da Silva, born

Simão Cavalcanti marries Maria Escobar

1653      Outbreak of war between the Netherlands and England seals fate of the Dutch in South America. Portuguese fleet blockades Recife and isolates the demoralized Dutch garrison

1654      Trajano da Silva, born

1654       Fr. Antonio Viera's famous sermon on Indian slavery in Maranhão, 1st Sunday in Lent

1654       Simão Cavalcanti marries Leonor da Casal (wife 2)

Fernão Cavalcanti, born

1658        Dutch expelled from Brazil. January 26, (Capitulation of Tarboda,) renouncing all claim to possessions in northeast Brazil. Receive four million cruzados from the Portuguese. (Note: 1664 Dutch ousted from New Amsterdam/New York.)

1658          Domitila Cavalcanti, born

1658          First permanent settlement in Santa Catarina is founded at São Francisco do Sul

1668 - (1666)     Two governors of Angola were Brazilians: João Fernandes Viera and André Vidal de Negreiros. Angola was during the 17th and 18th century a province of Brazil. (historian Jaime Cortesão)

1660          Manaus started as a fortress from which sloops (montarias) conveyed cacao, cotton, and turtle oil for street and house lamps to Belém. (date also given as 1669)

1661          England acquires Bombay from Portugal

1664         Minas Gerais first explored by Fernando Dias Paes Leme, though he was not the first European to penetrate it.

1665          King grants permission for first convent in Brazil. (Second not till 70 years later.)

1665          Arosha da Silva, dies

1660s        Sugar industry entered decline due to competition from English, French and Dutch in West Indies (1650-1715, Brazil's income from sugar down by two-thirds.)

1669          Guerens Indians kill distinguished citizen of Bahia. Paulistas under João Amaro sent to pacify São Francisco Valley clans

1669          Fort São Jose de Rio Negro built at junction of Negro/Solimoes to become first populated center in Amazon interior

1670          Olimpio da Silva marries Felicidade Bueno

Henrietta Cavalcanti, dies

1671         Paulista known as "The Old Devil" penetrated to one of the affluents of Araguaya River; he cut off the ears of Indian women for the gold nuggets they wore.

1671        Paulista Estévão Ribeiro Parente, at request of governor-general of Bahia took 400 bandeirantes into interior to fight the Indians. Two year "just war" enslaved thousands. Rewarded with sesmarias (plantation.)

1672        Amador, Olimpio, Trajano set out on prospecting Bandeira

1673        Sugar plantations face ruin in competition with West Indies

1674       Bandeira of Fernão Dias Paes Leme, "The Emerald Hunter," lasted for eight years, failed but marked transition from age of bandeiras to that of gold. (=basis for Amador da Silva's story.)

1676       Archbishopric of Brazil created with Salvador as metropolitan see (to remain religious capital of Brazil until 1907.) Two new bishoprics, Rio and Pernambuco, created at same time

1678      Florianopilis founded/gold search

1679      Amador executes his son, Olimpio

1680     Colonia do Sacramento is founded by the Portuguese across the estuary from Buenos Aires, beginning a century and a half of armed rivalry for control of Uruguay and access to the River Plate (ending in 1828, when "Uruguay" emerged.)

1681     Amador da Silva, dies