d in the month of September, holding out to such
as should become proprietors and reclaimers of land in the province of
the Minas Geraes and on the banks of the Rio Doce, all the advantages of
original donatories and lords paramount; and promising that every
settlement that should contain twelve huts of reclaimed Indians, and ten
houses of white persons, should be erected into a villa, with all its
privileges. The party that was sent up the Rio Doce discovered one
hundred and forty-four farms that had been ruined by the Indians, and
which they restored: they formed a friendly treaty with several tribes
of Puri Indians, whom they found already settled in villages, to the
number of nearly a thousand. These people were gentle, and not without
some of the arts and habits of industry; but they were heathens and
polygamists; not that a plurality of wives was general, or even common,
for there were only one hundred and thirteen wives to ninety four
husbands. They do not appear to have been cannibals, though it is
strongly asserted that the neighbouring Botecudos were so, and that
having gained a slight advantage over the Portuguese, they had eaten
four of them who fell into their hands.[29] I confess I am sceptical
about these anthropophagi. That savages may eat their enemies taken in
battle I do not doubt; under the circumstances of savage life revenge
and retaliation are sweet: but I doubt their eating the dead found after
the battle, and I doubt their hunting men, or devouring women and
children. With the latter atrocities, indeed, they have not been charged
in modern times; and as at the period the missionaries wrote the first
histories of them, it was politic to exaggerate the difficulties these
useful men had to encounter, in order to enhance their services, it is
not uncharitable to believe that much exaggeration crept into the
accounts of the savages, especially if we recollect the miracles
ascribed in those very accounts to many of the missionaries themselves.
Besides these measures concerning the Indians, other steps were taken
for the good of the country of no less importance; several colonies,
both of Europeans, and of islanders from the Acores, were invited and
encouraged. The fisheries off the coast were attended to, and
particularly that of the island of St. Catherine; and on the same island
sufficient experiments were made upon the growth of hemp, to prove that
time and industry only were wanting to furnish great
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