"Letter to King Dom Manoel on the discovery of Brazil"
THE Letter from Pero Vaz de Caminha, whose official title is Letter to King Dom Manoel on the discovery of Brazil, is considered the first document written in and about Brazil. Its author was the official registrar of the King Dom Manuel I, from Portugal, son-in-law of the Spanish kings D. Fernando and Isabel de Castella. Caminha accompanied the fleet of ships commanded by the Captain Pedro ÁlvaresCabral, in 1500, which had the mission of reconnaissance of a territory of the “New World” not yet explored by the Spaniards, but already visited (in the North region) by another Portuguese navigator, Duarte Pacheco Pereira, in 1498.
Caminha was in charge of reporting to the king what was curious, useful and valuable in the region found. This region corresponds today to the current coast of Bahia – the letter was written by Pero in the current territory of the city of Porto Seguro. Thanks to this letter (with seven handwritten pages in total) that today we know the day when Pedro Álvares Cabral and the other crew set foot on Brazilian soil for the first time:April 22, 1500.
King Dom Manoel's central concern: gold
As stated above, Pedro Álvares fulfilled the mission of recognizing a territory that was already known to King Dom Manoel since 1498, through the reports of Duarte Pacheco Pereira. These reports, however, remained secret for a long time. Dom Manoel needed to be sure of what wealth there was to be exploited there. Metals like gold and silver were the most coveted type of “find”. Confirmation of the existence of such metals fell to Cabral.
In one of the excerpts of the letter, Caminha describes the contact that Cabral made with two Indians. The episode is narrated in the excerpt below:
One of them saw white rosary beads. He showed that he wanted them, took them, played a lot with them and put them around his neck. Then he took them off and wrapped his arms around them. And he waved to the land and then to the captain's beads and necklace, as if to say they would give gold for it. [1]
Captain Cabral was wearing a gold necklace. Caminha, at first, thought that the Indian wanted to exchange gold for a bead necklace. But a while later, Cabral's men realized that precious metals could not be seen in large quantities. in the new land, as had happened to the Spaniards, who, arriving in Central America, saw Aztecs with adornments made of gold. As researcher Lucas Figueiredo says in his work Good Venture! The Gold Rush in Brazil (1697-1810), commenting on this excerpt from Caminha's letter:
In the seven-page letter written by Caminha in a small and elegant hand, the king learned about the new conquest of Portugal. It looked like heaven on earth, it had a lot of yams and, if there was an interest in cultivating it, everything would come out in it. The episode of the necklace in the captaincy, interpreted by the clerk as an indication of the supposed presence of the metal on land, was reported with due caution. "We took this in line because that was our wish", noted walks with honesty singular.[2]
The discovery of the Charter by Aires de Casal
Despite the great importance that Caminha's letter has today as a historical document, for a long time it was kept in the archives of the Portuguese Royal Navy like any other document. It was only discovered in the 18th century by the main guard of the Torre do Tombo archive, José Seabra da Silva.
The letter probably came to Brazil with the Portuguese Royal Family and its entourage, in 1808, and was rediscovered in the year 1817, when a Portuguese priest called Manuel Aires de Casal investigated the file of Portuguese Royal Navy. Aires de Casal was the first to reproduce the content of the letter in his work “Corografia Brasílica”.
GRADES
[1] WALK, Pero Vaz. Apud. FIGUEIREDO, Lucas. Good Venture! The gold rush in Brazil (1697-1810). Rio de Janeiro: Record, 2011. P. 28.
[2] FIGUEIREDO, Lucas. Good Venture! The gold rush in Brazil (1697-1810). Rio de Janeiro: Record, 2011. pp. 28-29.
By Me. Cláudio Fernandes
