ame of an affluent of the right bank of the Iapó River, and the historic Fazenda Fortaleza, in the Tibagi municipality. The name given to the river, which means “fortress”, coincides with the operation of the fazenda in the 19th century, when it was a base from which the fazendeiros defended themselves from the region’s native populations. José Felix da Silva (1760-1822), the owner, maintained an arsenal and a guard whose purpose was to attack the native occupants of the area. He organized frequent raids to trap the natives, which obliged them to retreat further into the sertão. He is considered to be the one responsible for the “Tibagi slaughter”, a massacre of natives which occured about 50 kilometers from the seat of the fazenda. The place became known as Mortandade (Killing), and the name was only changed to Harmony about 150 years later, when Indústria Klabin de Papel e Celulose came to Monte Alegre, currently the municipality of Telêmaco Borba.

     In 1808, José Felix da Silva was the victim of an attack which took his left hand and left his right hand disabled, according to the records in the Livro de Atas da Câmara Municipal de Castro.The attack had been ordered by his own wife, Onistarda Maria do Rosário, who then lived imprisoned in her husband’s house. Drama da Fazenda Fortaleza, a novel by David Carneiro published in 1943, was based on a memoir by the French naturalist Auguste de Saint-Hilaire, who was in Fortaleza in 1820, when the couple was still living, and he related what he heard and saw while he was there.

     Thomas P. Bigg-Wither, another foreign traveler, visited Fazenda Fortaleza in 1874. He descibed what he saw in great detail in his book, Novo Caminho no Brasil Meridional: A Província do Paraná: “From the veranda of the seat, one saw a line of low, whitewashed huts, the slave dwellings, and, across from them, a line of posts, now very worn down. These were the whipping-posts where, in other times, things happened to freeze the blood”.

     Fazenda Fortaleza is located beside the stretch of the BR 153 Highway (Transbrasiliana) between Tibagi and Ventania.

click on picture

to enlarge