THE RETURN OF THE BANDEIRA: ECONOMIC CALAMITY, HISTORICAL MEMORY, AND ARMED EXPEDITIONS TO THE SERTÃO IN MINAS GERAIS, BRAZIL, 1750-1808* INTRODUCTION H istorians of colonial Brazil have conventionally located the conclu- sion of the great era of bandeira-led conquest somewhere near the end of the seventeenth century. The onset of the colony’s gold cycle, corresponding with a series of major inland mineral strikes, reoriented those most actively engaged in the bandeira enterprise. Concentrated in the south- ern coastal captaincy of São Vicente, later, São Paulo, these wilderness adventurers had explored Portuguese America’s immense interior and hunted its indigenous inhabitants. When their accompanying search for allu- vial riches finally had born fruit, the Paulista backwoodsmen remade them- selves into miners and merchants. The bandeirantes had first discovered gold in 1693 in Brazil’s southeastern interior, the region that would soon acquire the name Minas Gerais or the General Mines; they made secondary strikes far to the west in Mato Grosso and Goiás in 1718 and 1725. Many then found themselves quickly displaced by the tide of Portuguese fortune- seekers and their African slaves who followed the paths now opened to the mining zones. As gold and then diamonds flooded the Atlantic world in unprecedented quantities, the colony’s subsequent historical legacy would The Americas 61:3 January 2005, 429-461 Copyright by the Academy of American Franciscan History 429 * I wish to thank Mary Karasch, A. J. R. Russell-Wood, and the editorial board of The Americas for bringing to fruition the scholarly collaboration presented in this issue. Maria Leônia Chaves de Resende shared data that enhanced this study. John Monteiro’s suggestions, as well as his published work on Paulista bandeiras, continue to enlighten. I am grateful to the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John Carter Brown Library, the American Historical Association, and the University of North Car- olina at Wilmington for providing funding and other support. Abbreviations used in the footnotes are as follows: Anais da Biblioteca Nacional do Rio de Janeiro (ABNRJ); Arquivo do Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro, Rio de Janeiro (AIHGB); Arquivo Nacional, Rio de Janeiro (AN); Arquivo Público Mineiro (APM), which houses a portion of the dispersed Arquivo Casa dos Contos (CC), and the Seção Colonial (SC); Biblioteca Nacional, Rio de Janeiro (BNRJ), Seção de Manuscritos (SM), Arquivo Conde de Valadares (CV); Revista do Arquivo Público Mineiro (RAPM).