Up the Amazon to Quito and back

Pedro Teixeira · 1637 CE – 1639 CE · Earth

Up the Amazon to Quito and back — Pedro Teixeira · 1637 CE – 1639 CE · Earth — Recorded expedition route · schematic map

Establish whether the Amazon could carry a force from the Atlantic to the Andes, and fix a Portuguese claim as far upstream as possible.

Historical context

Portugal and Spain had shared a crown since 1580, which is why a Portuguese captain could sail up a river into Spanish Peru at all, and both governments knew the arrangement would not last. The arrival at Belém in 1637 of Spanish friars who had drifted down from Quito proved the continent was open by water, and Portugal moved first. Teixeira’s ascent was a survey, an occupation and a message, and the boundary marker he planted at the Aguarico was the message’s signature.

The voyage, step by step

  1. Forty-seven canoes leave the Pará

    October 1637

    In October a fleet of dugouts and thirteen hundred people starts up the greatest river in the world.

  2. The mouth of the Tapajós

    1638 CE

    Against the current, eight months of paddling and poling brings them a third of the way.

  3. The province of the Omaguas

    1638 CE

    For weeks the banks carry villages almost without a break, with cotton fields behind them.

  4. Turning up the Napo

    1638 CE

    The fleet leaves the main stream for the river that comes down from the Andes.

  5. Quito, October 1638

    October 1638

    A Portuguese captain walks into a Spanish colonial capital having come from the Atlantic by river.

  6. Down the Solimões with Acuña

    1639 CE

    A Jesuit counts peoples, tributaries and turtle pens all the way to the sea.

  7. Back through the narrows, December 1639

    December 1639

    The fleet threads the channels behind Marajó and comes home after two years and two months.

Outcome

Reached Quito in 1638 after ten months on the river, planted a boundary marker at the Aguarico on the return, and brought Acuña’s description of the Amazon back to Belém in 1639.

Pedro Teixeira

Portuguese captain who took forty-seven canoes from Belém up the whole length of the Amazon to Quito in 1637–1638 and came back down with the first careful description of the river.

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Sources

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