Editing Cuiabá (section)

=== Colonial period ===

The first Portuguese explorers to Cuiabá were [[bandeirantes]], explorers, slavers, and fortune hunters based in the São Paulo region. The ''bandeirantes'' aided Brazil's great expansion westward, including to the Mato Grosso region. Manoel de Campos Bicudo, a ''bandeirante'' from São Paulo, visited the Cuiabá region in 1673 and 1682. He founded the first village in the region where the Coxipó River flows into Cuiabá, and named it São Gonçalo Beira-Rio.

[[Pascoal Moreira Cabral Leme|Pascoal Moreira Cabral]], a bandeirante of [[Sorocaba]], [[São Paulo (state)|São Paulo]], arrived at the site in 1718 and found it abandoned. He travelled up the Coxipó to enslave indigenous peoples, and fought a battle with the Coxiponé Indians, and lost. The bandeirantes returned down Coxipó, however, found gold, and enslaved indigenous people of the region for mining on the site. Cabral informed the Captaincy of São Paulo of his discovery in a letter dated April 8, 1719. He applied to be "guarda‐mor regente", or guardian and supervisor of the mines. A gold rush immediately followed Cabral's letter with prospectors mainly coming from the São Paulo region. Cabral "manag[ed] disputes and problems of all kinds"<ref name="hpip"/> as guardian of the mines until his death in 1724.

Cuiabá was founded on January 1, 1727 by Rodrigo César de Menezes, then the "captain" of the captaincy of [[São Paulo]] in the aftermath of the discovery of gold mines.<ref name="fernandes"/> It was officially called the ''Vila Real do Senhor Bom Jesus de Cuiabá'', a name taken from the district founded two years earlier.<ref name="ibge"/> The [[Church of Our Lady of the Rosary and Saint Benedict (Cuiabá)|Church of Our Lady of the Rosary]] was built at the time in the centre of the little town marked the location of a rich seam of gold. However, in 1746 much of the town was destroyed by an earthquake. Dom [[Antônio Rolim de Moura Tavares]] (1709–1782), the first Count of Azambuja, arrived in 1751 to serve as governor of the newly created [[Captaincy of Mato Grosso]] by King [[John V of Portugal]]. Tavares served in the position from 1751 to 1765, and founded [[Vila Bela da Santíssima Trindade]] as the new capital of the captaincy.<ref name="menezes"/>