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A Brief History
1549
John The Third, king of Portugal, was apprehensive. The royal treasures accumulated since the discovery of the maritime passage to the Indies were diminishing every year. Against all expectations, the East was proving to be "consuming people, weapons and money".
Meanwhile, pirates and smugglers were constantly invading the new lands West of the Atlantic, "discovered" by
a Portuguese navigator in 1500. Energetic measures were needed if Portugal was not
to loose Brazil.
That's the reason why the six ships that arrived in Morro de Santo Antonio da Barra, Bay of All Saints, on March 29th, 1549. They were brought by Tomé de Souza,
who was sent to Brazil by the king to build the city of São Salvador.
The place for the new city had been carefully chosen. First of all, it was located between the only two successful provinces: Nova Lusitânia (currently Pernambuco) and São Vicente (currently São Paulo). Secondly, in that region
it would be possible to count on the help of Diogo Alvares, a Portuguese who
had survived a shipwreck in 1510 and had since been living among the natives, who had great respect for him and called him Caramuru.
Among the one thousand five hundred people who joined the nobleman there were important servants of the Portuguese crown, priests, soldiers, artisans, stonemasons, carpenters, settlers, four hundred criminals deported from Portugal (known as "degredados"), and a
28-year-old young man called Garcia D'Avila.
Young Garcia was Tomé de Souza's servant, his right hand man and confidant.
It was to him that the governor trusted the keys
to the warehouses where the provisions brought by the ships would be kept.
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