Letter of Pero Vaz de Caminha

In his letter to Manuel I of Portugal, Pêro Vaz de Caminha gives what is considered by many today as being one of the most accurate accounts of what Brazil used to look like in 1500. "Arvoredo Tanto, e tamanho, e tão basto, e de tanta folhagem, que não se pode calcular", which roughly translates as "Such vastness of the enormous treeline, with abundant foliage, that is incalculable", is one of Pêro's most famous descriptions.

The admiral of the ship that sailed to Brazil sent Nicolau Coelho out to interact with the natives. The people they encountered when they arrived in Brazil were living in the Mesolithic period (start of change from a hunther-gatherer lifestyle to an agricultural and sedentarian one). They were brown and reddish-skinned and completely unclothed. Also, their languages were divided in four major families with many isolates, and even related languages and dialects were likely to not be mutually inteligible, so they had to communicate through actions and sign languages. They tried to give the natives things to eat such as bread, fish, cakes, honey and even wine. The natives took one taste of the things then spit them all out. They also tried to give them just water but the natives only swashed the water in their mouths, then spit it out. The one thing they did consent to was a cloak they could use to cover themselves while they slept.

One of the admiral's objectives with the natives was to get them to accept Christianity. They set up a cross in the village of the natives and the explorers all went up, knelt in front of it and kissed it, to show the natives the importance of the symbol and their love of Christianity.

He describes on a diary form the first journey from Portugal to Brazil and their arrival in this country. This letter is considered the first document of the Brazilian history as much as its first literary text. The original of this 27-page document can be found in the Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, Lisbon.

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