Itajuba Forest

The Itajubá forests belong to the Sapucaí valley and the slopes of the Serra da Mantiqueira in southeastern Brazil. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the wider region was predominantly occupied by Indigenous people described in the account as Puri-Coroados. Colonial settlement developed within that inhabited woodland country. In 1819 the priest Lourenço da Costa Moreira arrived at the small settlement then known as Soledade de Itajubá. He considered its mountain position, distant from a river, poorly suited to further growth and urged its inhabitants to move toward the Sapucaí below. About eighty families followed him in March, and he celebrated mass at the new site the following day. Religious objects from the older church were subsequently carried to a new building. The foundation of the later town thus involved the relocation of an existing community and its sacred furnishings, rather than the first arrival of people in the landscape. Forest, slope and river access shaped the practical choice, placing a local colonial episode alongside the older Indigenous occupation of the surrounding mountain country.