Summary

The residents of the Captaincy of São Vicente, which would become São Paulo in the 18th century, were known in the late 17th century as “Paulistas.” Their reputation in the colonial period was ambiguous: on the one hand, they were viewed as crude and unruly enslavers of Indigenous people; on the other, they were known as skilled backwoodsmen and soldiers. This image derived mainly from a character that would later come to be known as the bandeirante, a member of the expeditions that forged into remote backlands mainly to capture Indigenous people for their own use, without waiting for orders from the Crown or church. This source of labor enabled the internal reproduction of enslaved labor in a region whose economy was based on subsistence and supplying other regions in the high plateau where São Paulo de Piratininga was established in 1554, first as a school, later as a town. As the occupation of the region advanced over the following decades, a network of chapels, parishes, and towns linked by river and overland routes grew up, forming the geographical area of the colonial captaincy.

This occupation, which extended to the remote edges of the regions that would eventually make up Brazil and even into frontier lands contested by both Iberian empires, was motivated by a search for Indigenous peoples, a quest for precious metals, a demand for land, and the dictates of political disputes. In this sense, the backwoodsmen were not acting out of a strategic geopolitical motivation, as a certain school of self-congratulatory historiography would have it. In any event, the Paulistas played a role in shaping the internal and external frontiers of colonial Brazil through the 18th century in the context of the boundary treaties. The society formed under these circumstances was intrinsically tied to the Indigenous world, to the backlands, and to frontier living, and resulted in varied forms of crossbreeding and cultural interactions embodied in the mestizo type that became known as mameluco; the violent practices inherent in colonization, however, cannot be overlooked.