A South American Sorocabana Knife 'Faca De Ponta’ of the South American Cowboys

"Sorocabana knife". It was the knife used by the bandeirantes of Sao Paulo and by the tropeiros who traveled between the south and southeast regions. Made from an imported blade from Gebruder Weyersberg Solingen. Gilt decorated makers panel. Carved ebony hilt In the southern region of Brazil , "tropeiro" was the conductor of mules troops from the city of Viamao, Rio Grande do Sul, to Sorocaba, Sao Paulo. These troops supplied the gold cycle in Minas Gerais in the eighteenth century. This activity was responsible for the founding of countless cities in the states of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and Parana. Before the railways, and long before the trucks, merchandise trade was done by drovers in regions where there were no alternatives for sea or river navigation for distribution.
The interior regions, far from the coast, depended for a long time on this mode of transportation by mules . Since the end of the seventeenth century, mining works, for example, required the formation of groups of merchants in the domestic trade. Initially called men of the way, traffickers or passers-by, the tropeiros became fundamental in the trade of slaves , food and tools of the miners.
Far from being specialized merchants, the tropeiros bought and sold of everything a little: slaves, tools, clothes, etc. The existence of Tropeirismo was intimately related to the coming and going of roads and highways, especially the Estrada Real - road through which Minas Gerais gold arrived at the port of Rio de Janeiro and followed to Portugal .

Code: 20803