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The Monument to the Bandeiras, a stone sculpture group by Victor Brecheret, located in São Paulo, Brazil

The Bandeirantes were Brazilian colonial scouts who took part in the Bandeiras, exploration expeditions. Through these, the Bandeirantes expanded Portuguese America from the small limits of the Tordesilhas Line to roughly the same territory as current Brazil. This expansion discovered mineral wealth that made the fortune of Portugal during the 17th and 18th centuries.

Departure of a "monsoon", a party of Bandeiras by river. Oil by Oliveira Jr., Museu Paulista, São Paulo

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The Bandeiras were the expeditions by Paulistas and allied Indians to find precious metals and stones, enslave indigenous people and capture runaway slaves.

Leaving from the then poor and tiny village of São Paulo dos Campos de Piratininga, which was so unimportant to the Portuguese Empire that it even used the Língua Geral instead of the Portuguese language, the Bandeiras followed the course of the rivers -- in Southeast Brazil rivers flow from the edge of the Serra do Mar range in the coast inland -- and profited from the Union of the Crowns of Portugal and Spain to effectively invade the Spanish America territories which were then unimportant to Spain, their rich mines and Indian cities being in the western Andes mountains.

São Paulo was the home base for the most famous bandeirantes. Indians, mostly free men, and Mestizos predominated in the society of São Paulo in the 16th and early 17th century and outnumbered Europeans. The influential families generally bore some Indian blood and provided most of the leaders of the bandeiras, with a few notable exceptions such as Antonio Raposo Tavares (1598 - 1658), who was European born.

As a result of the Bandeiras, the Capitaincy of São Vicente became the basis for the vice-kingdom of Brazil and encompassed current states of Santa Catarina, Paraná, São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Goiás, Tocantins and both Northern and Southern Mato Grosso.

There were over 2.5 million Indigenous peoples in Brazil in 1500. By the middle of the 18th century, the number had dropped to between 1 million and 1.5 million. Many tribes living close to the Atlantic coast had been exterminated by the Portuguese. Others had fled into the interior, and their flight created an ever-greater need for slaves, one that was not entirely satisfied by importing them from Africa.

From São Paulo, the infamous Bandeirantes, adventurers mostly of mixed Portuguese and native ancestry, penetrated steadily westward in their search for Indian slaves. Along the Amazon river and its major tributaries, repeated slaving raids and punitive attacks left their mark. One French traveler in the 1740s described hundreds of miles of river banks with no sign of human life and once-thriving villages that were devastated and empty. In some areas of the Amazon Basin, and particularly among the Guarani of southern Brazil and Paraguay, the Jesuits had organized their Jesuit Reductions along military lines to fight the slavers.

Some of the most famous bandeirantes were Bartolomeu Bueno da Silva, Fernão Dias Pais, Antonio Rodrigues Arzão, Antonio Pires de Campos and Bartolomeu Bueno de Sequeira. In 1628, Antônio Raposo Tavares lead a bandeira, composed of 2.000 allied Indians, 900 Mamluks (Mestizos) and 69 white Paulistanos, to find precious metals and stones or to capture Indians for slavery or both. This expedition alone was responsible for the destruction of most of the Jesuit missions of Spanish Guairá and the enslavement of over 60,000 indigenous people.

From 1648 to 1652, Tavares also lead 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, and covering a distance of more than 10,000 km. The expedition arrived in Andean Quito, part of the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru, and stayed there for a short time in 1651. Of the 1200 men who left São Paulo, only 60 reached their final destination in Belém.

• History of Brazil - the Bandeirantes
• Colonial Brazil: Portuguese, Tupi, etc
• António Rapôso Tavares

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