Cacequi

Cacequi occupies open grassland between low ridges and shallow river valleys in western Rio Grande do Sul. Indigenous peoples long used these pampas before European settlement, exploiting game, fish, wild fruits and seasonal water while moving with the herds. The local Tupi-derived name was long preserved even as the population and political order changed.

The grasslands became a contested borderland between Portugal and Spain during the eighteenth century. The Treaty of Madrid in 1750 placed the Missions east of the Uruguay River under Portuguese rule, but warfare and the Treaty of Santo Ildefonso in 1777 reversed parts of the arrangement. Mission communities, cattle ranchers and military expeditions competed for land, water and routes across the pampas.

Portuguese forces occupied the eastern Missions in 1801, extending Rio Grande do Sul into the region around Cacequi. Cattle ranching spread across the natural pasture, linking the district to the charque trade and to routes toward the Uruguay frontier. Forts and military commands sought to protect ranches and regulate movement between Brazilian and Spanish territories. Estates and small settlements replaced the older mobility of Indigenous groups, while the remembered chief’s water survived in the place name.

The later city of Rivera lies here.