Pedro Álvares Cabral Reaches Brazil (1500): Portugal's Claim

Pedro Álvares Cabral’s arrival in Brazil on 22 April 1500 marks the beginning of Portuguese colonisation in South America. Cabral was leading a large fleet to India when it swung west across the Atlantic and sighted an unknown coast in what is now the state of Bahia. In just over a week ashore, the Portuguese held the first Mass, met the Tupiniquim people and claimed the land for their king, laying the foundations of modern Brazil.

Background

In 1499 Vasco da Gama returned to Lisbon from the first European sea voyage to India, proving that the route around Africa could make Portugal rich. King Manuel I quickly organised a much larger second expedition to establish trade with Calicut. He gave command to Pedro Álvares Cabral, a nobleman born around 1467–1468 in Belmonte, with little known seafaring experience.

The fleet of 13 ships and an estimated 1,200–1,500 men was the largest Portugal had yet sent overseas. Its captains included veterans such as Bartolomeu Dias, who had rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1488. Da Gama provided sailing instructions, which advised ships to sail well out into the Atlantic to pick up winds that would carry them around southern Africa.

The Treaty of Tordesillas, signed by Portugal and Spain in 1494, had divided newly found lands along a line 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. Lands east of the line were reserved for Portugal. The bulge of eastern South America fell on the Portuguese side, although no one yet knew it existed.

The voyage and landfall

Cabral’s fleet left Lisbon on 9 March 1500. It passed the Canary and Cape Verde Islands, losing one ship, and then headed south-west across the ocean. On 21 April the crews saw floating seaweed, a sign of land.

On 22 April 1500 lookouts sighted a high, rounded mountain. Since it was the week after Easter, they named it Monte Pascoal (Easter Mount). Small boats went ashore the next day and met local people. On 24 April the fleet moved north to a safer anchorage, which the sailors named Porto Seguro (“safe harbour”), in what is now the bay of Santa Cruz Cabrália.

The Portuguese stayed about ten days. On 26 April, a Sunday, the Franciscan friar Henrique de Coimbra celebrated the first Mass on an islet in the bay. On 1 May a large wooden cross was raised on shore and a second Mass held, with Indigenous people watching. Cabral named the land Ilha de Vera Cruz, the Island of the True Cross, believing it might be an island.

Pero Vaz de Caminha’s letter

The best record of these days is a long letter to King Manuel by Pero Vaz de Caminha, the fleet’s scribe, dated 1 May 1500. Caminha described the landscape, the abundant water and trees, and above all the people the Portuguese met, who were Tupiniquim, a Tupi-speaking group.

He wrote about their appearance, body paint and featherwork, their bows and arrows, their curiosity about the Europeans’ objects and their apparent lack of interest in gold. He recommended that the king’s main aim should be to convert them to Christianity. Caminha’s tone was curious and generally friendly, though written from a clearly European and Christian viewpoint.

The letter was kept in the royal archives in Lisbon and only published in 1817. Today it is regarded in Brazil as a foundational document, sometimes called the country’s “birth certificate”.

Leaving Brazil and the road to India

Cabral sent a supply ship back to Lisbon with the news and Caminha’s letter, commanded according to most accounts by Gaspar de Lemos. Two degredados, convicts sentenced to exile, were left behind to learn the local language. On 2 May the main fleet set sail for Africa.

The rest of the voyage was costly. Near the Cape of Good Hope a storm in late May sank four ships, and Bartolomeu Dias died. In India, Cabral reached Calicut in September 1500, but relations broke down: Portuguese traders were killed, and Cabral bombarded the city. Caminha himself died in the fighting. Cabral found better partners in Cochin and Cannanore and returned to Lisbon in mid-1501 with only part of his fleet, but with a valuable cargo of spices.

Accident or design?

Whether Cabral meant to reach Brazil has long been debated. The traditional view is that the landfall was a by-product of the wide westward arc recommended for sailing to the Cape. Some historians, especially in Portugal, have suggested the crown already suspected land in the west and wanted it claimed. No surviving document proves a secret plan, and most scholars now accept that the landing was probably unplanned but quickly exploited.

Cabral was also not the first European on the coast. The Spaniard Vicente Yáñez Pinzón had landed there in January 1500. Because the region lay within Portugal’s zone under Tordesillas, however, it was Cabral’s claim that endured.

Consequences

Manuel I sent follow-up expeditions, including the 1501–1502 voyage on which Amerigo Vespucci sailed, to chart the coast. The first economic activity was cutting brazilwood, whose red dye was prized in Europe, and the land gradually took its name from the tree.

Permanent settlement began in the 1530s with the captaincy system, followed by sugar plantations that depended on enslaved Africans. For the Indigenous peoples of the coast, contact brought disease, warfare and enslavement, and their populations fell sharply over the following century.

Key people

• Pedro Álvares Cabral (c. 1467–c. 1520): Portuguese nobleman and commander of the second India armada. After his return he received no further major command and retired to his estates; he died around 1520 and was buried in Santarém.
• Pero Vaz de Caminha (c. 1450–1500): a former official of the city of Porto who sailed as a scribe. His letter is the main eyewitness account of the landing. He was killed in Calicut in December 1500.
• Henrique de Coimbra (c. 1465–1532): Franciscan friar who led the group of missionaries in the fleet and said the first Mass in Brazil. He later became Bishop of Ceuta.
• Bartolomeu Dias (c. 1450–1500): the navigator who had first rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and who commanded one of Cabral’s ships. He drowned when his ship was lost near the Cape in May 1500.
• Manuel I of Portugal (reigned 1495–1521): sponsored the voyage and turned the discoveries of his reign into a global trading empire.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1500, 9 March: Cabral’s fleet of 13 ships leaves Lisbon for India.
• 1500, 22 April: The fleet sights Monte Pascoal on the coast of Bahia.
• 1500, 24 April: The ships anchor at Porto Seguro.
• 1500, 26 April: Friar Henrique de Coimbra celebrates the first Mass in Brazil.
• 1500, 1 May: A cross is raised on shore; Caminha dates his letter to the king.
• 1500, 2 May: The fleet leaves Brazil; a supply ship returns to Lisbon with the news.
• 1500, September: Cabral reaches Calicut in India.
• 1501, June–July: Cabral returns to Lisbon.

Why it matters

Cabral’s brief stop on the way to India gave Portugal a foothold in the Americas that grew into the largest country in South America. It explains why Brazil speaks Portuguese while its neighbours speak Spanish. Caminha’s letter, meanwhile, offers one of the earliest and most vivid European descriptions of the peoples of the Americas.