Minas dos Matos Gerais
|
|
Minas dos Matos Gerais is the original name of the current state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. It was part of the land occupied by the Bandeirantes, as most of the vice-kingdom of Brazil was, from the originally much smaller Terra de Vera Cruz and the even smaller Capitania de São Vicente. Actually the starting point of the conquest was the tiny village of São Paulo dos Campos de Piratininga.
The village of São Paulo dos Campos de Piratininga was settled as the altiplane correspondent to the one of São Vicente, Brazil, capital of the only successful Capitania of the South. Its inhabitants, called Paulistas were very poor and started explorations called Bandeiras in search of precious metals and stones, runaway slaves, and to make new Indian slaves. Those participating in the expeditions were the Bandeirantes, including allied Indians. The language then spoken was the Língua Geral.
While the Bandeiras were responsible for multiplying Portuguese territory in America, their greatest immediate success was in finding gold in a relatively nearby mountainous region, divided from the Capitania de São Vicente (current state of São Paulo) by a low, forested mountain range, called the Matos Gerais, or General Woods.
The Bandeirantes didn't have the resources or even the numbers to settle the Mines of the General Woods, in Portuguese Minas dos Matos Gerais. Thus the mines were disputed by more numerous, better equipped recent settlers arriving expressly from Portuguese, nicknamed the Emboabas. The ensuing Emboabas' War ended with the defeat of the paulistas, the opening of a New Way to the Mines of the General Woods (Caminho Novo das Minas dos Matos Gerais) linking the capital of the new Minas Gerais province, the village of Vila Rica do Ouro Preto (Rich Village of the Black Gold) to the port of São Sebastião do Rio de Janeiro at the Guanabara Bay in the Rio de Janeiro province.
Many of the so-called Historical Towns of Minas Gerais, today monuments of Brazilian Baroque, lie in or around the Caminho Novo, for example Juiz de Fora.