Itapocu

The Itapocu River linked the northern coast of present-day Santa Catarina with routes leading inland. In the sixteenth century, Guarani communities, often called Carijó in coastal European accounts, occupied this wider country. Their knowledge of paths made the river mouth a point of entry into an inhabited landscape extending beyond the shore.

In 1541, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca approached from Santa Catarina on his way to take up government at Asunción. Guided toward an overland route, his expedition entered the mainland by the Itapocu and continued through the interior. This journey depended on Indigenous knowledge and existing connections between the Atlantic coast and the Paraná-Paraguay country. The river consequently appears in early colonial records through a Spanish expedition crossing territory already traversed by its inhabitants. Its historical importance lay in the meeting of a coastal river and inland paths, rather than in the later towns established in its valley.