The first Europeans to arrive in Brazil, in 1500, the Portuguese brought blacks were brought from Africa to work as slaves in the sugarcane plantations, the main wealth of the colony. Absolute masters of life and death, the white slave-owners worked the slaves tirelessly, with the costs of punishments and tortures often fatal. Some slaves, however, eventually escaped from their captivity, hid in the undeveloped interior of the country, where they formed free communities to which they gave the name of Quilombo. Of these, the most celebrated was the Quilombo dos Palmares, founded at the end of the sixteenth century, in the mountains of northeastern Brazil.
