Monument to the Bandeiras is a large-scale granite sculpture by the Italian-Brazilian sculptor Victor Brecheret (1894-1955) at the entrance of Ibirapuera Park in São Paulo. It was commissioned by the government of São Paulo in 1921 and completed in 1954. It commemorates the 17th-century bandeiras, or settling expeditions into the interior of Brazil, and the bandeirantes that participated in them.
The Bandeirantes, literally “flag-carriers”, were explorers, adventurers, slavers, and fortune hunters in early Colonial Brazil. They led expeditions carrying the Portuguese flag, the bandeira, claiming, by planting the flag, new lands for the Crown of Portugal. They are largely responsible for Brazil’s great expansion westward, far beyond the Tordesillas Line of 1494, by which the Pope divided the new continent into a western, Castilian section, and an eastern, Portuguese section.
They mostly hailed from the São Paulo region, called the Captaincy of São Vicente until 1709 and then as the Captaincy of São Paulo. The São Paulo settlement served as the home base for the most famous bandeirantes. Most bandeirante leaders were descendants of first- and second-generation Portuguese who settled in São Paulo, but the bulk of their numbers was made of people of mameluco background (people of both European and Indian ancestries) and natives. Though they originally aimed to capture and enslave Indians, the bandeirantes later began to focus their expeditions on finding gold, silver, and diamond mines. As they ventured into unmapped regions in search of profit and adventure, they expanded the effective borders of the Brazilian colony.
The initial focus of the bandeirantes’ missions was to capture and enslave native populations. They carried this out by a number of tactics. The bandeirantes usually relied on surprise attacks, simply raiding villages or collections of natives, killing any who resisted, and kidnapping the survivors. Trickery could also be used; one common tactic was disguising themselves as Jesuits, often singing Mass to lure the natives out of their settlements. At the time, the Jesuits had a deserved reputation as the only colonial force that treated the natives somewhat fairly in the Jesuit reductions of the region. If luring the natives with promises did not work, the bandeirantes would surround the settlements and set them alight, forcing inhabitants out into the open. At a time when imported African slaves were comparatively expensive, the bandeirantes were able to sell large numbers of native slaves at a huge profit due to their relatively inexpensive price. By the 17th century, Jesuit missions had become a favorite target of the expeditions.
A bandeira tactic was to set native tribes against each other in order to weaken them, and then to enslave both sides. In 1636, Tavares led a bandeira, composed of 2,000 allied Indians, 900 mamelucos, and 69 white Paulistas, to find precious metals and stones and to capture Indians for slavery. This expedition alone was responsible for the destruction of most of the Jesuit missions of Spanish Guayrá and the enslavement of over 60,000 indigenous people. Between 1648 and 1652 Tavares also led one of the longest known expeditions from São Paulo to the mouth of the Amazon river, investigating many of its tributaries, including the Rio Negro, ultimately covering a distance of more than 10,000 kilometers. The expedition traveled to Andean Quito, part of the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru, and remained there for a short time in 1651. Of the 1,200 men who left São Paulo, only 60 reached their final destination in Belém.
The bandeirantes were also responsible for the discovery of mineral wealth, and along with the missionaries, for the territorial enlargement of central and southern Brazil. This mineral wealth made Portugal wealthy during the 18th century. The Captaincy of São Vicente became the basis of the vice-kingdom of Brazil, encompassing the current states of Santa Catarina, Paraná, São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Goiás, part of Tocantins, and both Northern and Southern Mato Grosso. With only a few outlying Spanish settlements surviving and the majority of Jesuit missions overrun by the Bandeirantes, the de facto control by Portugal over most of what is now the Southeast, Southern, and Central West territory of Brazil was recognized by the Treaties of Madrid in 1750 and San Ildefonso in 1777.
Domingos Jorge Velho (1641–1705) was one of the most fierce and effective Portuguese bandeirantes. He was born in Santana de Parnaíba, captaincy of São Paulo, to Francisco Jorge Velho and Francisca Gonçalves de Camargo. He was responsible for the repression of several indigenous nations in Bahia and especially Piauí, which he is reputed to have been the first colonist to explore. His greater fame, however, is due to his conquest of the Quilombo dos Palmares, in the hinterland of Alagoas, on behalf of João da Cunha Souto Maior, governor of Pernambuco. Velho accepted the assignment and, in 1694, with an army of Indians and mamelucos, European Native American offspring, overran the fortified city of Macacos, on the Serra da Barriga hill. According to the bishop of Olinda at the time, he did not speak Portuguese fluently but rather the língua geral, a Lingua franca based on Tupian languages spoken in Brazil at that time and could not read. But there are also claims that Velho not only spoke Portuguese but was indeed literate. Allegedly, he wrote a letter to the Portuguese King, and his recognizable signature can be identified frequently in the civil registries of Santana de Parnaíba. Velho is reputed to have had several Indian concubines, but only married in old age. He died in Piancó, captaincy of Paraíba.