Alida Metcalf is Harris Masterson, Jr. Professor of History at Rice University.

Abbreviations
Preface to the Second Edition
Acknowledgments
A Note on Currency
A Note on Orthography
Introduction: Family, Frontier, and the Colonization of the Americas
1. Indians, Portuguese, and Mamelucos: The Sixteenth-Century Colonization of São Vicente
2. Town, Kingdom, and Wilderness
3. The Origins of Social Class
4. Families of Planters
5. Families of Peasants
6. Families of Slaves
Conclusion: Family and Frontier at Independence
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index

This is an exciting book, indeed a pathbreaking book, for it opens new vistas in the history of colonial Latin America. . . . Metcalf skillfully uses the history of one frontier region to illuminate the history of southern Brazil. . . . She masterfully links her region to the general growth and development of the Portuguese colony thereby demonstrating the strengths which local history, case study, demography, and quantitative techniques can make. This is an outstanding contribution to frontier history, family history, and the social history of rural zones.