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MAJOR NATIONS IN A GLOBAL WORLD: BRAZIL
brought over by the Europeans. Many
natives fled inland to escape the horrors
of the plantations. Eventually the Por-
tuguese replaced the native slaves with
slaves from Africa.
Portugal would rule Brazil for more than
300 years, imbuing the country with its
language and its religion—Catholicism.
Although few Portuguese traveled inland,
Jesuit missionaries, whose mission was to
“save” the souls of the natives, traveled well beyond the coast converting the Indi-
ans to Christianity. That is why most Brazilians today are Roman Catholic. In fact,
Brazil has one of the largest Roman Catholic populations in the world. Still, Brazil-
ians practice a variety of religions, including Buddhism, Judaism, and candomblé, a
form of Catholicism practiced by Brazilians of African descent.
The priests were not the only ones moving into Brazil’s interior. Also mov-
ing inland were the much feared
bandeirantes
, a group of fortune hunters and
explorers who searched for resources to exploit and people to enslave. Some
200 years after Cabral arrived in Brazil, groups of
bandeirantes
traveled to the
rugged mountain ranges west of Rio de Janeiro and found gold.
The Brazilian gold rush was on and Brazil’s population boomed. Settlers
moved away from the coast and thousands of Portuguese set sail from the
mother country. New settlements sprung up in the gold-rich inland areas of
Minas Gerasi, Mato Grosso, and Mato Gross do Sul.
In response, the Portuguese government ordered that miners had to pay the
crown one-fifth of all gold taken from Brazil. The gold, and later diamonds and
other gems, allowed the financially strapped Portuguese government to pay
off its considerable debts after wars with Spain and the Netherlands sank the
country in a mountain of debt. Brazilian miners exported about 30,000 pounds
of gold a year to Portugal. By the late 1700s and early 1800s, all the gold that
could be found was harvested.
Domingos Jorge Velho, a famous
bandeirante
,
in a painting by Benedito Calixto, 1902.