São Vicente, the first coastal settlement in…
January 1554 CE
São Vicente, the first coastal settlement in Brazil, had been founded in 1532 as the first permanent Portuguese colony in the New World.
Twenty two years later, the Tibiriçá Chief and Jesuit missionaries Manuel da Nóbrega and José de Anchieta establish the village of São Paulo dos Campos de Piratininga on the Tiete River, 35 miles (55 kilometers) inland from the Atlantic Ocean and sixxty-eight kilometers (forty-two miles) inland from São Vicente, on January 25, 1554.
The clergymen establish a mission at the Colégio de São Paulo de Piratininga, aimed at converting the Tupi-Guarani indigenous Brazilians to the Catholic faith, as well as to make it easier for the Portuguese crown to rule them.
(Anchieta is said to have killed a native, which brings a degree of protest from Indian rights groups against his canonization by the Vatican.)
Today the second most populous city in the Americas, São Paulo, as the capital of the state of the same name, is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere, and the world's sevneth largest metropolitan area.