Tapuy-ú

Porto Seguro lies on the southern coast of Bahia, in country inhabited by Tupiniquim people when Pedro Álvares Cabral’s fleet arrived in 1500. A Portuguese settlement later grew on a height above the shore. By the late sixteenth century it was a small town, and in 1761 the captaincy was incorporated into the Portuguese crown. Fishing and the coast’s brazilwood formed part of the region’s colonial economy.