Irará is a city in
Bahia,
Brazil. The municipality is the hometown of former professional
footballer Dida, of
A.C. Milan and
Brazil national football team fame and musician
Tom Zé.
Until the 17th century, the region was inhabited by the
Irará was settled by the Paiaiá, a subgroup of the
Quiriris peoples. The land was annexed by the Portuguese in the 16th century, and became part of the vast land holdings of
Garcia d'Ávila (1528-1609) in the
Captaincy of Bahia. The Jesuits explored the area from the north via their settlement in present-day
Água Fria
Água Fria (Portuguese: ''cold water'') is a municipality in the state of Bahia in the North-East region of Brazil. It covers , and has a population of 17,033 with a population density of 23.77 inhabitants per square kilometer.
History
Água F ...
.
Bandeirantes
The ''Bandeirantes'' (), literally "flag-carriers", were slavers, explorers, adventurers, and fortune hunters in early Colonial Brazil. They are largely responsible for Brazil's great expansion westward, far beyond the Tordesillas Line of 1494 ...
entered the city to both hunt for precious stones in the Serra de Irará and to enslave indigenous people. Two structures remain from the bandeirantes, a church in the Vila de Bento Simões and a chapel in Caroba.
In mid-1717, the first explorations of the lands in the center of the current municipality were registered, where
Antônio Homem da Fonseca Correia was an early permanent Portuguese settler to the area. He built a chapel dedicated to Our Lady of the Conception in 1717, and left the land to his son. The farmhouse of the family gave rise to the village of Irará, which was also a site of a Paiaiá settlement.
References
Municipalities in Bahia
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