From the historian's notes

Ouro Preto, 1750

Brazil · South America · July 1750 · winter (austral; dry and cool at altitude)

What it was high

the boom's mature capital — administrative seat of Minas Gerais, tens of thousands in town and district, an enslaved majority working the diggings; among the largest towns in the Americas at mid-centurygold-camp sprawl from the 1690s strikes, chartered as Vila Rica in 1711

That year

• gold at maturity: three decades in, the easy placer gold is gone — deeper works, water-races cut across hillsides, and the first knowing talk that the mountain gives less each year 1740s-1750s highthe captaincy's entire economy tilting, slowly
• the church-building age: the brotherhoods (irmandades) — including Black and mixed-race confraternities — are financing the ornate churches that will define the town; the great Aleijadinho masterpieces are LATER, but scaffolds and gilders are already everywhere ongoing at 1750 hightownwide craft economy

Who held it high

Portuguese Empire — captaincy of Minas GeraisKing José I newly crowned in Lisbon (1750); his soon-to-be-dominant minister (the future Marquis of Pombal) entering office — new-reign winds will reach here months latethe Treaty of Madrid (January 1750) redraws South America's map on paper this very year; locally, the crown's gold regime squeezes as yields plateau — the quinto (royal fifth), smelting houses, and contraband patrols define daily economics

Its name high

Vila Rica (formally Vila Rica de Nossa Senhora do Pilar do Ouro Preto)Written in Latin

The date, there high

1750Gregorian Anno Domini; the liturgical calendar and the brotherhoods' feast cycle structure the town's yearChurch bells — each brotherhood's tower with its own voice — divide the day; the Angelus stops the street. Work at the lavras runs dawn to dark by overseer's horn. Lisbon's decisions arrive two to four months old by fleet and mule; the town lives in the crown's past tense.

Money medium-high

gold dust by weight — the oitava (eighth of an ounce) is the working unit; coin exists but dust rules retailvinténs of dust weighed on hand-scales; réis as money of accounta measure of cachaça or a plate at a quitanda: a pinch weighed in vinténs of dust — order of magnitude only

Weather medium

July: dry season — brilliant days around 20 C, cold nights down toward single digits; fog pooling in the morning ravines

Things

Objectsgold dust in quills and leather pouches — the street's actual cash; touchstones and tiny scales in every shop; smelted, crown-stamped bars for legal movement; rosaries and brotherhood medals; iron tools, chains and the instruments of slavery — present, and the pack does not look awayFoodangu (maize porridge), beans, torresmo — the miners' diet; carne-seca and manioc flour hauled in by mule at painful prices; local greens (couve), plus the ancestral feijoada lineage cooking in senzala pots; cachaça everywhere; imported Port wine for the smelting-house officers; quitanda sweets: raparduras, fruit pastesClothcoarse cottons and baize on most; enslaved people often in minimal issue cloth; black broadcloth, lace and silver buckles for officials at mass; the famous gold-chain-and-turban finery of some free and freed Black women — wealth display within a slave society's contradictionsGetting aboutmule trains (tropas) as the lifeline over serra trails; sedan chairs and hammocks carried by enslaved men for the wealthy; no wheels to speak of — the terrain forbids carts; everything rides or is carriedIn the airwet earth and cold stream-water at the workings; wood smoke and frying torresmo; incense and beeswax on feast days; mule sweat and leather on market mornings

What she'd hear

Portuguese in administration and street; West and Central African languages (Mina, Angola nations) alive in the senzalas and quitandas; Latin in church. Her Portuguese with a coastal story serves; the quitanda world's languages she can hear but not fake.

Where she could stand

• a lavra (digging) with its water-race — hillside gold workings: aqueduct-fed sluices, gangs of enslaved miners, overseers, cradles and pans
• the Casa de Fundição — the royal smelting house where gold dust becomes taxed, stamped bars
• Nossa Senhora do Pilar's interior — the matrix church's gilded baroque cave of an interior (built and gilded through the 1720s-40s)
• the ladeiras (steep street-stairs) on a tropeiro day — mule trains delivering EVERYTHING — the town imports its life over the mountains
• a quitanda stand — street-corner provisioning tables run by Black women — free and enslaved — selling food, cachaça and news

Researched for this card · confidence high