Captaincy of Bahia

The Captaincy of Bahia, fully the Captaincy of the Bay of All Saints (Modern Portuguese: Capitania da Baía de Todos os Santos), was a captaincy of Portuguese Brazil.

King João III of Portugal bestowed the donatary captaincy on Francisco Pereira Coutinho on 5 March 1534 as a reward for his service at Goa. The initial grant was notionally for 50 leagues of coastline around the Bay of All Saints, from the mouth of the Rio São Francisco to the Rio Jaguariçá. In practice, the early captaincies' boundaries were not respected but the settlement was too small for it to matter.

Arriving in Brazil in late 1536, Pereira Coutinho and his men slept on their ships until they had completed the construction of about forty adobe homes, which he christened the village (povoado) of Pereira. This was located in modern Salvador's Ladeira da Barra neighborhood and was quickly elevated into a township (vila) with a municipal council (concelho), which became known as Vila Velha ("Old Town"). A fortified house, the Castelo do Pereira, was also established. The settlement was assisted by "Caramuru", a Portuguese noble (fidalgo) named Diogo Álvares Correia who had lived with the Tupinambá Indians since a shipwreck in 1510. He was granted a concession (sesmaria) authorizing the authority he already wielded over a native village of 300 huts and over a thousand men. By 1545, the colony had a sugarcane plantation with two mills (engenho,) as well as smaller cotton and tobacco fields. However, mistreatment at the hands of Pereira's settlers caused the Tupinambá to turn hostile and in that year the settlement was abandoned, with the survivors fleeing to Porto Seguro. When they returned in 1547 or '48, their ship was damaged off the southern shore of Itaparica and the survivors captured by the Indians there. Caramuru was spared but the captain was consumed by the Tupinambá in a cannibalistic feast.

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