? What sort of education can men of that kind give to their children? What virtues do they have which serve as examples for their own children? All of them refer to themselves as distinguished men and for that reason they deprecate work, living in idleness and thereby depriving the State of hundreds of workers (Burns 159-60). These men, who in Portugal were the scum of the masses and the despair of the elite, come to this enormous land of freedom to make themselves insolent and to play the role of nobles. The majority of them were either criminals or persons who at home had no more than what they earned with their hoe or by the offices they held.

They arrive here excited and with the hope of advancing their fortunes. The majority of the inhabitants of this captaincy either have come directly from Europe or are born of Europeans. The lack of police in the captaincy of Minas Gerais disturbs order there. They generally appeared, to their own government, as вЂњvagabond and base people, for the most part low-class and immoral.вЂќДЇormer government official in Minas Gerais JosГ© JoГЈo Teixeira Coelho wrote an вЂњInstruction for the Government of the Captaincy of Minas Gerais,вЂќ in which he warned about the laziness and disorganization of the people there: These settlers?white, black, mix-raced, men, women, old, young, rich, poor, members of religious groups and nobles?came from all parts of Brazil.

Who actually did the mining?В Who made the most profit from this period of gold production?ДЄs soon as word got back to the coast that vast gold deposits had been discovered in Minas Gerais, a wave of people of all types descended upon inland Brazil.

Which groups of people typically ventured to the gold mines?.

Yet most land claims failed to yield a profit.Дata obtained from Skidmore, Brazil: Five Centuries of Change, 23. The Portuguese crown, seeking to profit from the gold boom, sold plots of land in the mining areas at a size of 15 feet of land per working slave. Somewhat less effective, but attainable to poorer miners, was the practice of washing down the banks of creeks with sluices from higher ground. People with substantial financial resources, who could afford to develop and implement digging methods that employed troughs and hydraulic machines, thrived. After a few years the mining areas were oversaturated with people and gold was less plentiful, so new mining techniques were required.

The period between 1693?1695 was defined by the discovery of gold and the ensuing rush from the coastal areas inland to strike it rich. It has been recorded that the Paulistas were searching for gold as early as 1572 in Paranagua.

The bandeirantes (the Brazilian equivalent of the American cowboy), rough-and-ready settlers and residents of SГЈo Paulo, were among the few people who explored and inhabited the interior. The landscape of Minas Gerais includes great hills and plateaus as well as rivers and creeks, where the explorers of Brazil believed there lay an abundant supply of gold.

All gold rush series timeline