Salvador De Bahia was one of the first settlements to be established in the New world.
Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci, in search of a westward passage to the spices of India and the Orient, under the flag of Portugal's King Joao III reached this large bay on the Atlantic Coast of Brazil on November 1st 1501...All Saints Day. Captain Vespucci named it "Bahia de Totos os Santos", the Bay of All Saints and he sailed on.
Thirty-five years later Portuguese Captain Francisco Pereira Coutinho was given land grant and permission by the king to establish a permanent settlement. That plan had a tragic setback due to the harsh manner in which Captain Coutinho treated the local Indians. The Indians attacked the Portuguese settlement and Coutinho and many villagers barely escaped south along the coast.
On March 1st 1549 the first Portuguese Royal Governor, Tome de Sousa, sailed to Bahia de Todos os Santos, accompanied by 600 skilled craftsmen to build a new settlement, 50 king's soldiers and 6 Catholic Jesuit priests and forever changed the lives and fate of the indigenous people.
De Sousa named the town "Nossa Senhora do Salvador da Bahia de Todos os Santos"
