NORTHERN FLUMINENSE
RESTINGAS FROM THE
SIXTEENTH TO THE
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
To Norma Crud Maciel and Dorothy Sue Dunn de Araujo,
always pioneeringIntroduction
Regardless the “scientific” nature of the information pro-
duced about restingas of the northern Fluminense (Rio de Ja-
neiro State) from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century, it can
be concluded that European invaders that have passed or set-
tled in the region noticed its ecosystems less and less through-
out the time. The transformations carried out in the natural en-
vironments were so deep that the landscape created happened
to predominate. The information about restingas slightly began
to appear in the seventeenth century. From the eighteenth cen-
tury onwards, they became more and more detailed, although
biased in a pejorative view, with very few exceptions. Only in the
twentieth century, in the 1980s, the view of restingas as eco-
logically rich and diversified environments prevailed in scientific
writings. Hence, let’s try to review this knowledge taking into
consideration the physical and biotic environments.
Lands and waters in the northern Fluminense are so
intertwined in such a way that it is impossible to mention the
former without mentioning the latter. From the sixteenth to the
twentieth century who wrote about restingas of the region, sci-
entists or not, encountered difficulties to make such a division.
The rivers, lagoons and sea waters have either built or destroyed
the lands. The arrangement of the lands shaped the coastline,
directed the courses of the rivers and delimited the lagoons. The
hydric network is also one of the most unifying features of the
region under study. It should be noted, however, that geology
and geomorphology have become part of specialized literature
only recently. It was, therefore, with different eyes that reports
from the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth and the nineteenth
centuries described this environment.
Restingas in the sixteenth century
Lands and waters. Documents about the region left by
Europeans in the sixteenth century do not report on native eco-
systems, however, they focus more on the definition of land-
marks, information about native people and on the incipient
initiatives to set up a Western way of life on tropical lands. The
letter of donation from the Captaincy of São Tomé to Pero de
Góis da Silveira by D. João III, signed on January 28th, 1536, con-
firming the permit of March 10th, 1534, is limited to establishing
that the captaincy limits extended thirty leagues from north of
Cabo Frio to Baixo dos Pargos.The contract corresponding to
the letter, signed on February 29th of the same year, also does
not contain any characteristics of the lands donated to Pero de
Góis. Only with the initiative of effectively occupy the Capitaincy
of São Tomé that some problems were registered in textual doc-
uments, giving a pale idea of the terrain. The difficulty of spec-
ifying precisely the Baixo dos Pargos as the limit of the Cap-
taincies of São Tomé and Espírito Santo led Pero de Góis and
Vasco Fernandes Coutinho, their respective donees, to seek a
more precise and unquestionable limit. This agreement was en-
dorsed by D. João III in a letter dated of March, 12nd, 1543 with
a brief description of the Tapemeri river mouth, named with the
European word Santa Catarina, currently Itapemirim. According
to the document, in the mouth of the river there were stone islets
that emerged during the low tide. The letters of Pero de Góis
to the king of Portugal and his partner, Martim Ferreira, bring
more information about rivers with mouth in restinga or beach.
Writing to Martim Ferreira on August 12nd, 1545, he mentions
Paraíba do Sul River and Managé River, both Tupi names and the
latter signifying “people meeting,” “gathering(1)”, currently Ita-
bapoana. Pero de Góis began the occupation of the Captaincy
with the foundation of the hamlet named Vila da Rainha, located
in the south of Managé river mouth, with a harbor and mill in the
last waterfall of the river. He was settled more in the tablelands
than in the restinga, from where he saw his project of creating a
European nucleus in South-Atlantic America to fail by the action
of native people(2).Jean de Léry reports in the mid-sixteenth century that
he had passed along the Tapemery river mouth, “where small
islands are at the entrance of the mainland”. Thus, confirming
the description of Vasco Fernandes Coutinho and Pero de Góis
to D. John III. He does not mention Itabapoana River and refers
to the inhabitants of the Paraíbas, certainly an allusion to Paraí-
ba do Sul River. Shortly after, the Calvinista journal mentions the
word restinga with the description of its physiognomy, perhaps
the first one: