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er of the Dutch West Indian Company, Nikolas Oudan, and James Purcell of the North
Company. Purcell, undaunted, after being released from Iberian custody returned to the
Amazon the following year (1628) to make a go of it with tobacco plantations and act-
ive native trade at the fort of Torrego, on the north side of the river roughly opposite the
mouth of the Xingu. This establishment once again was crushed by Teixeira, and after
these events North Company and the Dutch West Indies Company ceased their efforts
on the Amazon channel, retreating to outposts on the Wild Coast. 13
After reasserting control over the Amazon channel, the Portuguese began expanding
sovereignty to the north, proclaiming a new captaincy in 1637,that ofCabo Norte, a ter-
ritory stretching from the Vicente Pinzón River (in this case the Oyapoque) about 420
kilometers to the north of the Amazon, and stimulated missionary colonization on the
lower Amazon and the estuary as a proxy for actual Portuguese settlement. 14
European patent letters still abounded, because the Caribbean trade had become pros-
perous and the economic potentialities of the region had mythic allure. Brazil, a colony
itself, was seen as having limited local powers over the continental immensity, espe-
ciallythemangrovecoastoftheGuianas.TheFrenchking,LouisXIV,indifferenttoPor-
tugueseconcerns,grantedrightstothecharterCompagnieEquinoctaltolandsextending
from the Amazon to the Orinoco and, on the west, to the confluence of the Rio Branco
with the Rio Negro. In 1676, after a triumph over the Dutch in the Guianas, lands were
assigned by royal decree from the Amazon to the Island of Trinidad to the new charter
company, Compagnie Cap de Nord. France's northern colonial boundaries were often
contested, but by 1690 the French were definitively installed in Cayenne, while Belém
and the lower Amazon was clearly under the aegis of the Portuguese crown. Between
them lay the lands of the Cabo Norte, the Contesté/Contestado with no other European
enterprise in between, a seething terra nullius with multiple overlapping territorial as-
sertions.
The Luso-Brazilian Strategy: The Socio-ecology of Survival
Luso-colonialism hadusedamestizoized setof“tropicalhands”asitsagents,entrepren-
eurs, and proconsuls in Africa since the mid-1400s. They were culturally and through
intermarriage probably more adapted to the tropics and benefited from the malarial res-
istance of their African progenitors, coupled with European immunities. In Amazonia,
thesecolonialistsforgedalliancesthroughmarriage,mistresses,andclanshipwithAmer-
indians and West African slaves. This genetic mixing would, over time, enhance the res-
istancetomalariaandyellowfever,reducingthemortalityoftheoffspringoftheseLuso-
colonials compared to newly arrived Europeans who died like flies, and native Americ-
ans—confronting both African maladies and European diseases to which they had lim-
ited immunity—whose populations crashed. 15
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