João Dos Santos
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João dos Santos (
Évora Évora ( , ), officially the Very Noble and Ever Loyal City of Évora (), is a city and a municipalities of Portugal, municipality in Portugal. It has 53,591 inhabitants (2021), in an area of . It is the historic capital of the Alentejo reg ...
Goa Goa (; ; ) is a state on the southwestern coast of India within the Konkan region, geographically separated from the Deccan highlands by the Western Ghats. It is bound by the Indian states of Maharashtra to the north, and Karnataka to the ...
, 1622) was a Portuguese Dominican missionary in India and
Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...
.


Life

On 13 August 1586, four months after leaving
Lisbon Lisbon ( ; ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 567,131, as of 2023, within its administrative limits and 3,028,000 within the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, metropolis, as of 2025. Lisbon is mainlan ...
, Santos arrived in
Portuguese Mozambique Portuguese Mozambique () or Portuguese East Africa () were the common terms by which Mozambique was designated during the period in which it was a Portuguese Empire, Portuguese overseas province. Portuguese Mozambique originally constituted a str ...
. He was at once sent to
Sofala Sofala , at present known as Nova Sofala , used to be the chief seaport of the Mwenemutapa Kingdom, whose capital was at Mount Fura. It is located on the Sofala Bank in Sofala Province of Mozambique. The first recorded use of this port town w ...
, where he remained four years with Father João Madeira. Between them they baptized some 1694 natives and had built three chapels when they were ordered back to Mozambique. After a journey of hardships, they were forced to remain on the
Zambesi River The Zambezi (also spelled Zambeze and Zambesi) is the List of rivers by length, fourth-longest river in Africa, the longest east-flowing river in Africa and the largest flowing into the Indian Ocean from Africa. Its drainage basin covers , sli ...
, Santos staying at
Tete Tete may refer to: * Tete, Mozambique, a city in Mozambique *Tété (born 1975), a French musician *Tetê (born 2000), a Brazilian footballer *Tete Montoliu (1933–1997), Spanish jazz pianist **''Tete!'', an album by Tete Montoliu *Tete Province ...
for eight months. From registers found there he discovered that the Dominicans had baptized about 20,000 natives before the year 1591 at Tete alone. From Mozambique he was sent to the small island of Querimba, where he remained for two years. The registers here gave the information that 16,000 natives had been baptized before the year 1593. Next, he was appointed commissary of the Bulla da Cruzada at Sofala, where he stayed more than a year. His labours in Africa ended on 22 August 1597, when he left Mozambique for
Portuguese India The State of India, also known as the Portuguese State of India or Portuguese India, was a state of the Portuguese Empire founded seven years after the discovery of the sea route to the Indian subcontinent by Vasco da Gama, a subject of the ...
. With the exception of eleven years spent in
Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...
(1606–17) he lived the rest of his life in India.


Works

His book ''Ethiopia Oriental'' is a description of the Portuguese colonization of Africa at the end of the sixteenth century. He gives an account of the manners and customs of the
Bantu Bantu may refer to: *Bantu languages, constitute the largest sub-branch of the Niger–Congo languages *Bantu peoples, over 400 peoples of Africa speaking a Bantu language * Bantu knots, a type of African hairstyle *Black Association for National ...
tribes at that date; he was a keen observer, and generally a sober narrator of things that he saw.


References

* The entry cites: **''Ethiopia Oriental'' (Lisbon, 1891) **Theal, ''The Portuguese in South Africa'' (Cape Town, 1896) {{DEFAULTSORT:Santos, Joao Dos 1622 deaths Portuguese Dominicans Portuguese Roman Catholic missionaries Year of birth unknown People from Évora 16th-century Portuguese people 17th-century Portuguese people Dominican missionaries Roman Catholic missionaries in Mozambique Roman Catholic missionaries in India