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The first black army captain in Brazil

By Paul Barnett - posted Thursday, 7 May 2009


He ordered his men to take only their knives and pistols and a tightly-bound bundle of wood each. They left for the fort at 2am. In the dark, they arrived at their destination undisturbed. Silently and quickly they threw the wood in to the deep trench, making an easy passage over the water, then with this same wood piled against the wall, they climbed easily into the fort, Dias leading. The garrison was asleep. Before it awoke, Dias had gained the greater part of the fortress.

The awaking Dutch resisted desperately. Dias was wounded, shattering the bones of his left arm above the wrist. Learning that it would take some time to adjust the bones and arrange the dressing, he bade the surgeon cut off the hand. “It is of less consequence to me than a few moments of time just now,” he said, laughing grimly. “The five fingers on this other hand will be worth that many hands.” This done, he returned to the fight, and although the Dutch had the advantage of artillery and rifles, he defeated them, capturing the garrison with its stores of provisions and ammunition.

When the smoke cleared, the Portuguese flag was floating over the battlements, as Dias had promised. Menezes, the commander-in-chief, could hardly believe the good news. He sought out Dias and found him lying on a camp bed weak from loss of blood.

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Dias was taken to Portugal at the command of King John IV, who received him with great distinction and invited him to ask for anything he wished. Dias, thinking of his men first, asked that the regiment be perpetuated and that pensions be given to his soldiers. Later, under the orders of the King a town called Estancia was built for them. In addition, he raised Dias to the nobility and struck a medal depicting the capture of the fortress in his honour. Driven out of Pernambuco, the Dutch finally yielded.

While the Portuguese government liberally rewarded all the leaders of the war in the province of Pernambuco, Dias and his men were forgotten. As modest as he was brave, Dias remained silent. Brazil, impoverished by the long war, reduced them to slavery again, on an even more oppressive scale. The Indians, who had also played a very important role in victory, were treated even worse and were once again raided by slave hunters.

Dias lived another 17 years before he died in neglect and poverty in Pernambuco on June 8, 1662. His memory was, however, perpetuated in a regiment composed entirely of Negroes. The regiment lasted until the Brazilian Civil War of 1835. It was commanded by the descendants of Dias.

In resources, Brazil is a very rich country and is as large as the United States and France combined. Had this immense territory remained in the power of Holland, the Dutch might have been strong enough to retain New York and other parts of New England. Henrique Dias broke the power of the Dutch in South America and made the rise of the English-speaking peoples in North America easier. In short, but for Dias there might not have been a United States, or the United States might have been shaped very differently.

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First published in Recife Guide on February 7, 2009.



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About the Author

Paul Barnett is a Britsh expat living in Brazil. He developed the site Recife Guide and offers guided tours and other services to English speaking tourists.

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