Qualla: Matias Cardoso

Matias Cardoso: Introduction

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Medsjp91, CC BY-SA 4.0. Minas Gerais is a state assembled out of gold, and nearly everything old in it dates from the rush. Matias Cardoso does not. Far north of the mining districts, on the right bank of the São Francisco in country that goes months without rain, stands a church of reburnt brick put up between 1670 and 1673 — before the strikes, before the captaincy of São Paulo e Minas do Ouro was drawn, before there was a Minas Gerais to come from. It is generally held to be the oldest building still standing in the state.

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Image: Medsjp91 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Matias Cardoso: The Church That Predates the State

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Helio Costa15 from Brasil, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Matriz de Nossa Senhora da Imaculada Conceição does not read as a country chapel. It runs 33 metres long and 20 wide, with two square towers 20 metres high and a run of semicircular arches forming a covered walkway along the flank. The masonry is load-bearing brick — requeima...

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Image: Helio Costa15 from Brasil | CC BY-SA 2.0

Matias Cardoso: The Man in the Name

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Medsjp91, CC BY-SA 4.0. Matias Cardoso de Almeida was born around 1605 and was still alive after 1704, which is a long career for the work he did. He came up on bandeiras out of São Vicente and Itanhaém, and by the 1660s he was regarded as one of the men who knew the routes between São Paulo and the sou...

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Image: Medsjp91 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Matias Cardoso: Morrinhos, and the Cattle That Paid for It

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Medsjp91, CC BY-SA 4.0. The place began around 1660 under a different name — Morrinhos, the little hills — as a cluster of fazendas raising cattle in country too dry for much else. Cattle turned out to be the right bet. The São Francisco was the highway of the interior, and Morrinhos traded up it toward...

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Image: Medsjp91 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Matias Cardoso: Geraizeiros

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Medsjp91, CC BY-SA 4.0. People of this region call themselves geraizeiros, after the gerais — the open backlands that gave the state the second half of its name. They live with drought and thin soils, a long way from any large city, on a stretch of river that the twentieth century mostly routed around. ...

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Image: Medsjp91 | CC BY-SA 4.0