Diogo Álvares

1475 (age 75)

Viana do Castelo, Portugal

He embarked from Portugal about 1510 to seek his fortune in the New World. His ship was wrecked near Bolivar, in what is now Brazil. Part of the crew was lost, and the natives, who were cannibals, seized the others. Alvares, "by making himself useful, " saved his life. He fortunately had salvaged a musket and some gunpowder from the shipwreck and impressed the Indians by shooting down a bird. Thereafter he was known as Caramurú ("Man of Fire" ). He marched with his Indian friends against their enemies, promoting himself from a slave to a sovereign to whom the Indian chiefs offered their daughters in marriage. According to Robert Southey, the poet-historian, he soon "saw as numerous a progeny as an old Patriarch's rising round him. " Most of the best families of Bolivar trace their origin to him. Alvares sailed for Europe taking with him his favorite wife, Paraguazú, who, on arrival in Paris, was baptized Catarina Alvares. She and Alvares were married, with the King and Queen of France as sponsors. Alvares was not permitted to go to Portugal but wrote King John III, urging him to colonize Brazil without delay. He returned to the New World, and in 1530 and 1531 assisted M. A. de Sousa, sent out as one of the "captains of the islands. "