Portuguese slaver (c.1598-1658) who undertook a number of extensive expeditions into the interior of Brazil. Born in Beja in southern Portugal, he had arrived in Brazil in 1622 with his father, who had been appointed captain-major of São Vicente. As a leading citizen of São Paulo, António Tavares is first recorded there in August 1628 massing a huge bandeira of sixty-nine whites, nine hundred mamelucos and over two thousand Indians. The bandeira, which contained many prominent Paulistas, was divided into four companies led by Tavares, along with Pedro Vaz de Barros, Bras Leme and Andre Fernandes. Its precise route is unknown, and it may have combined with another bandeira under Mateus Luis Grou near the Río Paraná. The objective of the expedition was partly to expel the Jesuits from the Guaira missions to the southwest, and for this purpose it crossed the Río Tibagi on 8.9.28. A palisade was built close to a mission village where Tavares announced his intentions to the Jesuits.
On 30.1.29, Tavares raided the mission of San Antonio on the Río Ivai, taking four thousand Indians and burning the village. Another detachment sacked the mission of San Miguel on the Río Tibagi. The bandeira then marched for 42 days back to São Paulo, accompanied by two Jesuits, Justa Mancilla and Simon Maceta, and arriving back in May 1629. In 1630 Fernandes returned to destroy two more missions, followed by Paulo da Amaral in 1631.
The Guaira missions were finally evacuated in 1631 by Antonio Ruiz de Montoya, who led an exodus of ten thousand Indians to safety down the Río Paraná. In 1635 a bandeira of some two hundred men operated in the region of (present) Río Grande do Sul under the command of Fernao de Camargo and Luis Dias Leme. A small detachment which penetrated into the interior was slaughtered by Caaguaras. There is some evidence of the entry of a fleet into the Lago dos Patos, but documentation is scant.
In January 1636 Tavares left São Paulo for a second time, heading once again for mission country. In December 1636, with a force of 150 Portuguese and 1500 Tupi, he attacked Jesus-Maria, the northernmost of the Tape missions (to the north of the Río Jacui), and later seized the reductions of San Cristobal and San Joaquin. In January 1637, Tavares returned to his stockade, then, after four months, headed back for São Paulo, arriving in the summer of 1638
In 1637 André Fernandes, his brother Baltasar Fernandes, and Francisco Bueno (who died soon after departure) struck missions on the Río Ibicui and upper Río Uruguay. In December 1637, with a force of only two hundred men, Fernandes took the heavily populated aldea of Santa Teresa and proceeded to devastate the country around the Río Ijui. In early 1638 he established a base in Caasapamini. The region being under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Buenos Aires, Fernandes and his bandeira returned to São Paulo under threat of excommunication in the early part of 1639.
Although such raids were officially condemned by Philip IV in 1639 and 1640, Tavares and other bandeirantes wielded considerable influence and continued their expeditions unmolested. Tavares at some time returned to Portugal but was back in Brazil in 1647.
In 1648-52, at the age of fifty, Tavares, having been commissioned by certain Brazilian authorities to open a route to Peru, set out to lead a bandeira across the entire breadth of South America. He started from São Paulo, accompanied by ANDRE FERNANDES, in May 1648 with two hundred Portuguese and a thousand armed Indians, following the Río Tiete downstream to the Río Paraná. He headed first for the Jesuit missionary outposts in the province of Itatin, where he destroyed the town of Jerez on the Mbototea (= R. Miranda). In November 1648, Antonio Pereira de Azevedo, one of Tavares' lieutenants, destroyed a new Jesuit mission on the Río Apa, capturing Cristobal de Arenas, the father in charge. In April or May 1649, in the region of Corumbá, Tavares was joined by a second bandeira under Captain Antonio Pereira.
From Corumbá the precise route of the expedition is unknown, and varies from one account to another, all of which are largely based on unpublished Spanish, Portuguese and Jesuit documents. One source states that the expedition then forced its way across the Chaco and the swamps of Izozog, explored some of the rivers around Santa Cruz de la Sierra (in Bolivia) and ascended the Andes towards the silver mines of Potosí. Another account has the bandeirantes lost in the swamps of the upper Río Paraguay, from where they descended the Río Madeira to the Amazon. It is certain, however, that Tavares arrived in Quito and stayed there for a short time in 1651, but it is unlikely that he reached the Pacific. Whatever their route, the bandeirantes made a leisurely descent of the Amazon, investigating many of its tributaries, including the Río Negro, and arrived in Belém in 1652. By that time Tavares had completed the grand circuit of the Amazon basin for the first time; an epic journey of some 7000 miles. When Tavares returned to his family in São Paulo sometime in 1652, he was apparently so disfigured that neither friend nor family could recognize him.
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Written by Ray Howgego. Permission has been given for publication on the Web to Discoverers Web, for which our gratitude.