The history of Rio Grande do Sul begins with the arrival of humans in the region, around 12,000 years ago. Its most dramatic changes, however, occurred in the last five centuries, after the colonisation of Brazil. This most recent period took place amid several external and internal armed conflicts, some of which with great violence.
Overview Guilhermino César mentioned that the history of the state "is one of the most recent chapters in Brazilian history" because when polyphonic masses were already being sung in the Northeast, Rio Grande do Sul was still occupied by a handful of Portuguese villages and cattle estancias. The south-southeast was a "no man's land" where Spanish troops sent by Buenos Aires often marched, defending the interests of the Spanish Crown, the legal owner of the area at that time. Essentially, Rio Grande do Sul, until the end of the 18th century, was a virgin region inhabited by indigenous peoples. The only relevant signs of European civilization and culture in the entire territory until this time were a group of Jesuit reductions founded in the northwest, most notably the Sete Povos das Missões. However, being of Spanish creation, until recently the Missions were seen as a chapter apart from the state's history. But in recent years they have been assimilated into the integrated historiography of the state.
In the first half of the 19th century, after many conflicts and treaties, when Portugal obtained definitive possession of the lands that today make up the state, expelled the Spanish, dismantled the reductions, and massacred or dispersed the Indians, a society with a Portuguese matrix was established and an economy based mainly on charque and wheat began, leading to a cultural flourishing in the biggest centers of the coast - Porto Alegre, Pelotas, and Rio Grande. This growth relied on the contribution of many German immigrants (who cleared new areas and created a significant regional culture and prosperous economies) as well as on slavery. In 1835, began a dramatic conflict that involved the gauchos in a fratricidal war, the Ragamuffin War, with a separatist and republican character. After the war, society was able to restructure itself.
At the end of the century, trade grew stronger, immigrants of other origins such as Italians and Jews arrived, and at the turn of the 20th century, Rio Grande do Sul had become the third largest economy in Brazil, with a growing industry and a rich bourgeois class. However, it was still a state divided by serious political rivalries, and there were more bloody crises. At this time Positivism was outlining the government program, creating a dynasty of politicians inherited from Júlio de Castilhos that ruled until the 1960s and influenced all of Brazil, especially Getúlio Vargas, who in his origin was a castilhista. During the period of the military dictatorship, Rio Grande do Sul faced many difficulties with freedom of expression, as did the whole country, but the economic growth of the Brazilian Miracle provided for investments in infrastructure. By the end of the cycle, however, the state had accumulated enormous public debt.
In the last decades, the state has been consolidating a dynamic and diversified economy, although linked to the agricultural sector, and has gained a reputation as having a politicized and educated population. Even though there are many challenges to be overcome and great regional differences, in general, the state has improved its quality of life reaching indexes higher than the national average, has projected itself culturally throughout Brazil, and has begun a process of opening to other scenarios in the face of globalization, while it has started to pay more attention to its historical roots, its internal diversity, the minorities, and its environment.
Prehistory
The geographical profile of Rio Grande do Sul was formed by successive transformations that began about 600 million years ago. This territory was once a sea, it was once a desert, and in several regions massive burial by lava flows took place. It is believed that it was only two million years ago that the geography was more or less defined as it is known today, when the sandy strip of coastline was fixed.
About 12,000 years before the present began human occupation, with the arrival of hunter-gatherer groups from the north. The prevailing thesis is that they originally crossed the Bering Strait in far northern North America, which was then dry because of global glaciation, and then migrated southward, occupying many spaces along this route over generations.
The first to arrive in the territory of Rio Grande do Sul found a region different from the one seen today. At 12,000 years BP, the glaciation that had covered all of Patagonia with ice and cooled the global climate, was beginning to recede, and the region's climate, drier and colder than at present, was warming and moistening. However, snow likely still fell in the region every winter. The sea level was rising, as it melted the glacial ice that had accumulated on the world, and flooded the coastal plain. The local vegetation was likely sparse, consisting mainly of savannah, with forests only on the highlands and riverbanks. The local fauna was also different, consisting of many giant species, such as the mylodons, glyptodons, and toxodons.
Human settling occurred through the western border, along the Uruguay River, where the state today borders Argentina and Uruguay. The Alegrete municipality, located in this area, on the banks of the Ibicuí River, is the oldest archaeological site with human remains in the state, dating at 12,770 years old. These first peoples, who shared the same material culture, known as the Umbu tradition, lived by hunting and gathering in the plains of the pampa, among its open fields and riparian forests. They were nomadic and likely established temporary camps according to the seasonal abundance of certain natural resources, following animal migration routes or ripening seasons for edible vegetables.
They left relatively poor records. Archaeological sites include remains of settlements, food scraps such as animal bones and seeds, as well as personal adornments and lithic artifacts such as chipped stone arrowheads and spears, bolas, cutters, scrapers, and other tools. Their culture predominated for about 11,000 years, although it exhibited regional adaptations to the varied scenery of the territory, which is composed of different types of ecosystems. The climatic changes that the region went through over the millennia determined important modifications in the composition of the flora and fauna, to which the human populations had to adapt, and this was reflected in variations in their customs and cultures. During the climatic optimum, a period of a significant rise in global temperatures that occurred from 6 thousand years B.C. onwards, these peoples began to colonize the forests of the sierras and to climb the plateau. Rock engravings and tools adapted to woodworking appear, especially bifacial axes. The so-called Humaitá tradition was formed there.
Meanwhile, the conquest of the coast was being completed, forming a specific culture, the Sambaqui tradition, adapted to life by the sea and in the coastal plains. Characteristics of this tradition are the deposits of shells, crustacean shells, and fish remains that gave it its name, where one can also find burials and artifacts indicative of its association with the sea, such as hooks and net weights. There is also evidence of rudimentary agricultural practices, suggesting that they were sedentary, for at least part of the year. Other distinguishing features are the settlements on low artificial hills, known as cerritos, formed in floodplain areas of the coastal plain.
Around 3,000 years BP, the climate cooled again and stabilized in a condition similar to the present one, producing new adaptations in the wildlife and human cultures that flourished. In the highlands and the plateau, where the climate remained relatively cold, with frequent snowfalls and frosts, the peoples of the Humaitá tradition, who colonized the area during the climatic optimum, needed to adapt, and then typical straw-covered underground shelters appeared, which could be organized into villages with several units.
Sometime later, coinciding with the beginning of the Christian era, the second great human wave arrives in the region, composed of Guaraní indigenous people from the Amazon. It is thought that they, too, may have been driven to migration by global climate change. They had a developed agricultural culture, domesticated animals, and mastered the technique of terracotta and polished stone. They colonized the forested valleys of the central depression, the coast, and part of the sierras, but avoided the higher and colder regions, and made little headway into the pampas, as they preferred warmer climates and the forested environment to which they were accustomed in the north. Their sites are distinguished from other traditions by the form of the settlements, in more stable and structured villages, and by the abundance of polished stone artifacts such as arrowheads, axes, macerators, and ceramic vessels of different shapes and decoration, techniques that are now observed to appear in the sites of other groups. Their influence also showed in the expansion of agriculture.
Another group to descend from the north along with the Guaranís were the Jês, of similarly developed culture, leaving a greater mark on the plateau, where they first influenced the peoples of the Humaitá tradition and soon supplanted them. But by the time Brazil was "discovered" in 1500, almost all of the state's Indians, who numbered 100,000 to 150,000 by scholarly estimate, were Guaranís or mixed with them. The groups least affected by this invasion were the Jês of the middle plateau, and the Charrúas and Minuanos, of the pampas.
The beginning of European colonization The territory that today constitutes Rio Grande do Sul already appeared on Portuguese maps, under the name of Capitania d'El-Rei, since the 16th century. Despite the Treaty of Tordesillas, which defined the end of the Portuguese lands at Laguna, Portugal was eager to extend its dominions to the mouth of the Rio da Prata. In the 17th century, bandeirantes from São Paulo began to roam the area in search of treasure and to enslave Indians. In this spirit, ignoring the treaties, on July 17, 1676, through a Royal Charter, Portugal delimited two captaincies in the south which together extended from Laguna to the Rio da Prata, donated to the Viscount of Asseca and João Correia de Sá. On November 22, 1676, the papal bull Romani Pontificis Pastoralis Solicitudo strengthened the Portuguese pretensions because by creating the bishopric of Rio de Janeiro, it established as its limits the coast and hinterland of the captaincy of Espírito Santo to the Rio da Prata. Soon after, the Portuguese Crown began to consider the occupation of the southern lands, legally Spanish.
Coastal occupation The first expedition of conquest, organized in 1677, failed. Another, in 1680, under the command of Dom Manuel Lobo, managed to reach the Prata in January of the following year, founding the Colônia do Sacramento, with a prison and the first shelters for the colonists. Spain, at this time weakened by wars against France, despite attacking the colony, did not outline a more serious reaction to the Portuguese expansion and, in 1681, the Provisional Treaty was established, delimiting new borders in the region and recognizing Portuguese sovereignty over the left bank of the Rio de la Plata.