Tavares, Antônio Rapôso (1598–1658)

Antônio Rapôso Tavares (b. 1598; d. 1658), backwoodsman of São Paulo, born in São Miguel de Beja, Portugal. In 1628, Tavares commanded a powerful military force of several hundred paulistas (residents of São Paulo) and about 2,000 Indians that crushed the Jesuit reductions of Guairá and transferred at least 30,000 Guaraní slaves to the farms and plantations of São Paulo. Tavares himself set up a wheat farm along the Tietê River with over 100 of the Indian slaves. In search of new captives, he led another large expedition to the Tape missions along the Uruguay River in 1636, again capturing thousands of Guaraní slaves.

In 1648, in his most ambitious adventure, Tavares set out from São Paulo in search of the Serranos (possibly Guaraní) Indians of the Andean foothills. Repelled by Spanish and Jesuit forces in Paraguay and weakened by hunger and disease, the expedition disbanded, with Tavares and a few followers plunging forward through the heart of the Amazon, finally reaching the Portuguese fort of Gurupá in 1651. Though acclaimed subsequently by historians as a great exploratory venture that contributed to the territorial formation of modern Brazil, the expedition was a resounding failure in its time. After wandering aimlessly through the forests of South America for over three years in search of Indian slaves, Tavares returned to São Paulo, where he died a shattered and impoverished man.

See alsoBrazil: The Colonial Era, 1500–1808; Guarani Indians; Paulistas, Paulistanos.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Richard Morse, ed., The Bandeirantes (1965), provides translations of contemporary descriptions of paulista raids on the missions and an article on Tavares's 1648 expedition. Charles Ralph Boxer, Salvador de Sá and the Struggle for Brazil and Angola (1952), provides an excellent context for Tavares's activities. See also the detailed account in John Hemming, Red Gold (1979), chaps. 12-13.

Additional Bibliography

Goes Filho, Synesio Sampaio. Navegantes, bandeirantes, diplomatas: Um ensaio sobre a formação das fronteiras do Brasil. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 1999.

Monteiro, John M. Negros da terra: Índios y bandeirantes nas origens de São Paulo. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1994.

                                        John M. Monteiro