[edit] Native Brazilians and early Portuguese settlers

When arriving in April 1500 in the coast of what would later be known as Brazil, the Portuguese fleet commanded by found the primitive people who inhabited itThey were divided in several distinct tribes, that fought among themselvesand that shared the same linguistic familyThe "men were hunters, fishers and food collectors and the women were encharged of the reduced agricultural activity that was practicedSome of the tribes were nomads and other sedentary; they knew the fire but not metal casting and a few were cannibalsThe settling was effectively initiated in 1534, when King divided the Brazilian territory in twelve hereditary captaincies that would be governed by members of the lesser nobility or proceeding from educated familiesThe experience revealed itself to be an utter disaster, and in 1549 the king assigned a governor-general to administrate the entire colonyAround 1530, the (the same tribe that Cabral metand their bitter enemies the the largest and most important tribes in Brazil, allied themselves with the Portuguese and the French, respectivelyBetween the Portuguese and the Tupiniquim "occurred a certain intermittently pacific inter-racial assimilationWhile the Tupinambás, however, were mostly exterminated in long wars and mainly by European diseases to which they had no immunitiesThe ones that survived were enslaved by other tribes or by the Portuguese or fled toward the countrysideBy the middle of the 16th century, sugar had become the most important item of the Brazilian exportationsThus, the Portuguese turned to other forms of man power to handle with the increasing international Enslaved Africans were imported and became the "basic pillar of the economy" in the most populous areas of the colony