Pedro Teixeira (b.1570-1585 - d.4 July 1641), occasionally referred to as the Conqueror of the Amazon, was a Portuguese conquistador and military officer. In 1637, almost a century after Francisco de Orellana's journey down the Amazon River, Teixeira became the first European to travel both up and down the river's length. Teixeira also headed the government of the captaincy of Pará in two different periods, one in 1620-1621 and another in 1640–1641.

Teixeira was born either in 1570 or 1585 at the Vila of Cantanhede, born to a noble family, he was a Knight of the Order of Christ and a Portuguese nobleman in service of the royal family, he married Ana Cunha in Praia, Azores, daughter of Sargento-Mor Diogo de Campos Moreno, with whom Teixeira fought together in Maranhão

First arriving in Brazil on 1607, Teixeira participated in Portugal's campaign against French Maranhão, he fought in the Battle of Guaxenduba and distinguished himself commanding either the fort of Natividade or Santa Maria.

Asia

Pedro Teixeira, travelled extensively in Asia, and wrote an account of his travels: Narrative of my Journey from India to Italy. He was in Malacca in 1600. He was then in Baghdad in 1604, where he gives an account of the new Ottoman Empire governor Hadim Yusuf Pasha."

Early Colonization of Pará

Pedro Teixeira was part of Francisco Caldeira Castelo Branco's expedition to found the city of Belém. In 1617, he also led attacks against the Tupinambás, aiding an ongoing campaign by Portuguese settlers in Maranhão, with the goal of a clearing a land road between Belém and São Luis.

In 1620, when Custodio Valente, the Capitão-Mor in charge of Pará left for Portugal. Teixeira, his adjunct, became interim governor of the Captaincy. During this period, Bento Maciel Parente made an attempt to take the captaincy for himself by force, but facing resistance by Pedro Teixeira, left for Maranhão. Parente was later granted the position by the Governor of Brazil, and immediately gave orders for Teixeira to leave and lead another expedition against the natives.

He also led several more campaigns and expeditions in the Amazon defeating the Dutch in their forts of Orange and Nassau, both in the Xingu River, and on 23 May 1625 assaulted the shared Dutch and English fortress of Mandiatuba(Maniutuba?) on the Xingu River, facing the forces of Dutch commander Nicolau Ouaden, who briefly fled to the Island of Tucujus where he and the English commander Philip Pursell were killed by Teixeira's forces, in the same month he stopped a new attempt by the Dutch to occupy the islands in the Amazon Delta and on 21 October 1625 he defeated the Dutch in the fort of Taurege(Tourege/Torrego), expelling the Dutch from their last holdings in the Amazon basin.

In September 1629, Teixeira besieged the English Fort of Taurege, where he defeated two enemy sorties and on 24 October 1629 the help that was sent to relieved the fort's forces, with the garrison led by James Pursell surrendering in the same day and being sent to Belém. This earned a reprisal on 26 October 1629, led by the English Captain, Roger North, who attacked Teixeira in the Fort of Santo Antônio in Gurupá, where Teixeira triumphed and rebuked the English assault, North, defeated left to found the fort of Camaú. Consequently, the governor of Maranhão, Jácome Raimundo de Noronha, commissioned an expedition with the goal of discovering the river all the way to Quito, learning the best places to establish fortifications, securing through the good conduct of the expeditionaries and small gifts the peace and friendship of the indigenous tribes, and founding a settlement to mark the limit, in the Amazon, of Portuguese control. And so did Pedro Teixeira.

Legacy

Teixeira's grand expedition and the founding of the settlement of Franciscana to mark the limit between the Portuguese and Spanish Crown would be used extensively by the Portuguese to sustain their claims to Upper Amazonas, including in the negotiations for the Treaty of Madrid, over a hundred years afterwards.

References

Sources

  • Acuña, Christobal de. 1641. Nuevo descubrimiento del gran Rio de las Amazonas. Madrid: Imprenta del Reyno.
  • Smith, Anthony (1994). Explorers of the Amazon. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.