Finally!
After more than FIVE HUNDRED YEARS, it is, finally, published in Canada an article stating that the first Europeans to take possession of Canada were the Portuguese! I have been affirming this historical fact for more than fifty years!
It needs to be stated also, on the Canadian press, that the name Canada is derived from the lands of Canada which were the property of the Corte Reals in Tavira, Algarve, Southern Portugal, were they were originated from.
Manuel Luciano da Silva, M.D.
“The Beaver”
Is the official magazine of the Canada’s National Historical Society, founded in 1920 by the Hudson’s Bay Company, and is published bimonthly. 478-167 Lombard Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3B OT6, Canada.Phone (204) 988-9300 Fax (204) 988-9309E-mail cnhs@historysociety.ca
Here is the historical article which appeared on the December 2002/ January 2003 issue, by Mark Reynolds.
Before the English, before the French, the Portuguese laid claim to the land that became Canada.
Land of the King of PortugalBy Mark Reynolds
It has been forty-five or fifty years since certain gentlemen of Viana associated themselves together, and according to what information they had of terra nova de Baccalaos they determined to go settle some part of it… And having lost their vessels there, we have no more news of them, except through the Biscayans, who are in the habit of going to that coast for the purpose of procuring and exporting many things that a are to be found there. These men give information that they had asked them to tell us at home how they were situated there, and that they desired priests to be sent to them – that natives were mild, and the country fertile and good… And this is in Cape Breton, at the commencement of the coast which runs to the north.
Francesco de Souza Tratado das Ilhas Novas 1570
Commissioned by Alberto Cantino, the Duke of Ferrara’ envoy to the Portuguese court (and also a spy), this 1502 map accompanied and account of Gaspar Corte-Real’s second voyage to the New World sent to the duke. To the west of Greenland -- yet east of the Tordesillas line that divided the world between Portugal and Spain – is Terra Del Rey de Portugall – the “Land of the King of Portugal”. The indented seacoast resembles the coastline of Newfoundland, and the trees indicate the impression Newfoundland’s forest made on the Portuguese. This map has six Portuguese flags on the Atlantic!
Please note that on the west of the Tordesillas line, on the middle portion, there is a peninsula which is Florida, on this same map with the date 1502. Ponce de Leon arrived there looking for the Fountain of Youth in 1511, and the American historians continue to be naïve stating that Ponce de Leon discovered Florida!…
Sometime around the year 1521, a few dozen families from the Azores Islands landed on the mysterious shores of the New World. They came armed with charter from King Manuel of Portugal to establish a colony that could serve as a base for industry and trade. Led by a gentleman who claimed to have discovered and therefore gained title to these new lands, the settlers represented a last desperate attempt by the Portuguese to assert their claim to North America.
Their colony predates the settlement of Port-Royal — considered Canada’s first permanent European settlement – by more than eight year. Today it is forgotten, along with Portugal’s North American ambitions.
At one point those ambitions were nearly without limit. Almost from the moment Prince Henry the Navigator took up residence at Sagres, Portugal, in 1420, the Iberian country had been at the forefront of maritime exploration. In less than thirty years, Portuguese sailors and merchants had discovered and settled the Azores Islands, and established a ring of trading posts and forts that linked Lisbon to the riches of the Africa.
That Christopher Columbus first approached the Portuguese to fund his Atlantic voyage of discovery is well known. João lI’s dismissal of the Italian adventurer’s proposed trip forced him to go to the Spanish court of Isabella and Ferdinand—but the Portuguese hardly sat by to watch the Spanish pro1 it from that initial error in judgment.
Pope Alexander VI’s Bull of 1493— modified by the Treaty of Tordesillas a year later — established a line of demarcation between the two powers. The lands to the west of this uncertain line of longitude were to be a Spanish monopoly. Lands east of the line, including Newfoundland and possibly present-day Nova Scotia, were Portuguese territories. An agreement on paper was no good without some sort of concrete claim, and so Portugal sent out ships to discover what lands might be on its side of the line.
The best-known Portuguese voyages to Canadian waters are those of the Corte Reals. Gaspar Corte Real claimed to have seen Labrador in 1500, although it was more likely Greenland. In 1501 he coasted Labrador, Newfoundland, and perhaps as far south as Cape Breton island. As was the practice of the Portuguese in Africa, one of his three ships took fifty natives (probably Micmac) as slaves back to Portugal. Although these unfortunates made it to Lisbon, Corte Real did not. — his own ship disappeared and he was never heard from again.
His mission of exploration—and title to any lands discovered—was inherited by his brother. Miguel Corte Real had no better luck than his sibling; although one ship from his tiny fleet returned to Portugal at the conclusion of his 1502 voyage, Miguel himself was lost. His ship disappeared while searching for Gaspar. Despite these tragedies, both voyages managed to map an extensive portion of the North American seaboard.
European cartographers felt free to name what lands they encountered, and evidence of the Portuguese’s endeavors in this regard clot maps of Canada today. The Bay of Fundy (Portuguese for “deep bay’) retains its original designation despite centuries of French and English occupation, and the former’s attempt to rename it Baie Français. Labrador itself comes from lavrador— meaning “farmer’— probably named after the original occupation of the sailor who first spotted it. Other bays, rocks, reefs. and harhours bear distinctly Portuguese names as well.
Naming a land is a far cry from owning a land, and by the early 1500’s it was already clear that Portugal would have stiff competition in the scramble to assert sovereignty over these territories. England and France felt no need to abide by the terms of the Treaty of Tordesillas, an agreement to which neither had been a party. The decision by England’s Henry VII to back Cabot’s Atlantic adventures was a direct challenge to the Iberian powers. Cabot’s landing in what was clearly Portuguese territory in 1497—before the Corte Real voyages — established a better claim there for England. Indeed, a charter to Cabot expressly forbade his company to enter lands already discovered by the Portuguese, but allowed him to exploit those theretofore unknown. This effectively meant that England had no intention of staying out of either Spain or Portugal’s sphere unless there were prior rights backed by some sort of occupation.
By 1506 the Portuguese were sharing the Newfoundland fishery with English, French, Breton, and Spanish vessels. Only John and Sebastian Cabot’s voyages to these regions were official voyages of exploration—the taxes on the catches brought back to Europe were profit enough for most monarchs.
Portugal had little interest in sending more of its resources west once the route to India around Africa had been established in 1499. That there was no easy westward passage to the Orient was becoming increasingly clear, and so the Portuguese turned their efforts elsewhere.
Nonetheless, on May 13, 1521, João Álvares Fagundes was given a charter from King Manuel, who granted him lands that “he went to discover, and has now certified us by trustworthy testimony that he did discover ... to wit, the land which is called terra firma from the line of demarcation, which bounds the possessions of the crown of Castille from ours in the South, until it comes to the bounds of the land which the Corte Reals discovered in the north.”
Fagundes claimed to have made a voyage — at his own expense to the New World in 1519. The charter the Portuguese king granted him in I52I was for lands already discovered. His commission positions these lands in relation to a number of islands that include present-day Sable Island (which was well known to navigators of the time), and others south of Newfoundland that could have been St. Pierre and Miquelon.
That the land is somewhere on Nova Scotia seems fairly likely the question then is where? At least one author believes the land to have been southern Nova Scotia, on the Fundy coast. Farmland even today, this is an area that Francesco de Souza could more credibly describe as “country fertile and good.”
However, most evidence seems to point to present-day Cape Breton Island. Samuel de Champlain wrote in his 1612 Voyages that “the Portuguese at one time wished to inhabit this island, and spent one winter there [ Niganis, present-day Ingonish ], but the severity of the season and the cold made them abandon the idea.”
What became of the colony? If the would-be settlers made it to Canadian shores, they left almost no trace of their presence. De Sousa, writing fifty years after Fagundes received his charter, seemed to believe it was still in existence. More likely Champlain is correct in his assertion that the Portuguese only lasted one winter before returning back to the warmer climes of Portugal.
The Nova Scotian minister and journalist George Patterson wrote on Portuguese voyages to the Canadian East Coast in 1890. He claimed that a cannon found on Cape Breton Island in the vicinity of St. Peter’s and another in Louisbourg Harbour were of a type that had fallen out of use long before the time of French colonization in the area. These armaments, according to Patterson, stand as proof of that area’s claim to be the site of the first European most likely Portuguese — attempt at colonization in North America.
Visitors to present-day Louisbourg can see a reconstruction of one of the original cannons. Ken Donovan, a Parks Canada historian at Fortress Louisbourg, says that the guns are indeed of a type—called a petrerra—that were in use in the early sixteenth century. Commonly used as rear-mounted swivel guns on ships as late as the early eighteenth century, they were effective enough for use long after newer weapons had come into vogue.
“It’s something that’s really serviceable,” he said. “You can have a dime in your pocket that’s fifty years old that’s still good. I think it’s a goose chase to say it’s from the era of the Portuguese.”
Mark Reynolds is a Montreal writer and a frequent contributor to the Beaver,
