Qualla: Minas Novas

Minas Novas: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Casc12, CC BY-SA 3.0. The town exists because a man got lost. In the late 1720s, the bandeirante Sebastiao Leme do Prado was heading for the Aracuai River and the Itamarandiba, fleeing an epidemic that had struck his previous camp near Diamantina. He never reached either river. Somewhere in the tangled hills of northeastern Minas, he took a wrong turn and stumbled instead onto the Fanado River and a stream the paulistas eventually named Bom Sucesso - Good Success. The name was appropriate. There was gold in the gravel. Word spread across the hinterland, a rush began, and on 2 October 1730 the settlement that had grown up around the discovery was elevated to the status of a town. It was called Vila de Nossa Senhora do Bom Sucesso das Minas Novas da Contagem. Today it is called Minas Novas, and about 31,000 people live in it.

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Image: Casc12 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Minas Novas: The Border That Moved

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sérgio Mourão, CC BY-SA 4.0. For the first thirty years of its formal existence, Minas Novas was technically part of Bahia. The administrative borders of colonial Brazil were loose things, drawn over terrain nobody had fully mapped, and the Crown had originally assigned the region to the captaincy of Bahia f...

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Image: Sérgio Mourão | CC BY-SA 4.0

Minas Novas: The Sobradao

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brunoneverland, CC BY-SA 3.0. On a hill in the center of town stands a four-story building made of wattle and daub. It was finished in 1821 - two hundred and four years ago - and it is called the Sobradao, the big mansion. Four stories of Baroque-styled wattle and daub is almost unheard of in Brazilian archit...

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Image: Brunoneverland | CC BY-SA 3.0

Minas Novas: The Brotherhood of the Rosary

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit João André Mendes Santos, CC BY-SA 4.0. Every June the town holds a festival for Our Lady of the Rosary, organized by the Irmandade dos Homens Pretos do Rosario - the Black Folk Brotherhood of Our Lady of the Rosary. The brotherhood dates to the slavery era, when enslaved and later freed Africans formed religious sodal...

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Image: João André Mendes Santos | CC BY-SA 4.0

Minas Novas: The Rivers of the Hinterland

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brunoneverland, CC BY-SA 3.0. Water organizes Minas Novas. The Fanado River flows through the city itself, supplying its water. It joins the Aracuai River, which cuts through the municipality to the west. The Setubal River threads through the east and also flows into the Aracuai; the Capivari rises within the...

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Image: Brunoneverland | CC BY-SA 3.0

Minas Novas: Elevation and Quiet

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Centro de Memória - Unicamp, CC BY-SA 4.0. The urban area sits at 635 meters above sea level, high enough that mornings can be cool even in a subtropical latitude. Neighboring municipalities - Capelinha, Chapada do Norte, Leme do Prado named after the founding bandeirante, Novo Cruzeiro, Setubinha, Turmalina, Virgem da La...

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Image: Centro de Memória - Unicamp | CC BY-SA 4.0