Peabirú trail is quite controversial. It is mentioned by different non-scholarly sources as a mythical trail that linked the Andes with the Atlantic Ocean, cutting across Southeastern Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Brazil. The age and direction of the trail are unclear, but there are some historical records about it. Today's post will look into this mysterious trail and its links to an early peopling of America.
For instance this article published by Pulso, a Canadian-Latinamerican journal, calls it the "Sacred Road of the Gods", and says its name means "the round trip road" in Guarani language (Note: this may not be true, because a formal paper by Beatriz Sacagni, 2021 (O Traço do Peabiru - rastros desvelados em paisagens paulistanas) says it means "trail of trodden grass"].
Pulso, cites two Brazilian historians, Hernani Donato y Luiz Galdino and states that the Incas built the road between 1215 and 1450 AD. Another historian Rosana Bond says it was built by the Guarani of Paraguay when they moved towards the Atlantic coast c.1000-1300 AD. Then comes the fantasy: a white god-like man, Viracocha of the Incas built it after civilizing the Guarani, he was known by them as Zumé or Pay Sumé (See this website or this one for more on the mystical side of the trail).
An article in BBC says it is 3500 to 4000 km long (2,100 to 2,500 mi), and some parts of it are up to 10,000 years old, which is very ancient, and piqued my interest. Another online site said it could be linked to 25,000-year-old the Santa Elina site.
Alejo García The first European to use it in 1524
The first account of this trail was published by Díaz de Guzmán in his work "La Argentina Manuscrita", written in 1612. Chapter V (in Spanish) tells about an "entry" (expedition) "which four Portuguese from Brazil made by land, to the borders of Peru".
He describes the journey of four Portuguese men who had been cast away onto the shores of San Vicente, Brazil by a Portuguese officer named Martín Alonso de Sosa in 1526. The leader was a man called Alexo or Alejo García. He spoke a Guarani native dialect and with his companions walked inland, across the jungle to the Paraná River, crossed it, and continued across Guarani territory to the Paraguay River and with a large group of them went west, to "discover and recognize those lands, from where they would bring back many valuable clothes, and metal objects, both for use in war and for peace." Over two thousand natives marched west with Garcí. They stopped at a place now called San Fernando on a high cliff over the Paraguay River, others say they moved along a river called Paray. On their trek they came across other natives, in the Paraguayan Chaco region, and fought with them. Finally, after many days the reached the mountain ranges of Peru and crossed "the border of that kingdom between the distance now called Mizque, and the boundary of Tomina; and finding some settlements of Indian vassals of the Mighty Inca King of that entire kingdom, they attacked them, and robbing and killing all they found, they went on for more than forty leagues to near the towns of Presto and Tarabuco, where a great multitude of Charcas Indians came out to meet them; therefore they turned back... For this reason the Incas ordered all those borders to be fortified, both with good forts and with strong garrisons, as can be seen today, which remain along that mountain range, which they call the Cuzco Toro, which is the main one that runs through this kingdom for more than two thousand leagues." García sent two of his men ahead, to reach the coast and tell them about his expedition's outcome. But he and the other man were killed. His son with an Indian woman was spared, and it was this son who told Guzmán about the expedition.
There are some inconsistencies in Guzmán's sources, but it is an interesting story. The facts are that Alejo García, a Portuguese mariner formed part of Juan Díaz de Solís expedition along the coast of South America. He was sent by the King of Spain to find a southern passage into the Pacific Ocean, in 1516 (4 years before Magellan's voyage). Solís discovered the River Plate which wasn't the strait he was looking for, he was killed by the natives on the Uruguayan coast and the survivors returned to Spain. One of the ships sunk by Santa Catarina Island in Southern Brazil. The castaways lived with the Guarani natives there until Alejo set out in 1524-25 on his inland trek.
In 1526, the Spaniards had not yet discovered Peru (Pizarro's expedition reached Peru six years later, in 1532). A second expedition left San Vicente with 70 men under the command of José Sedeño, to obtain more gold from Peru. They went westwards along the Añembí river to the Paraná and from there to the Paraguay River where they fought against the natives who had killed Alejo Garcí. Sedeño was killed and his men massacred. The natives then united and marched west to attack the Inca realm. They fought against the Indians that lived on the frontier, took their wives and their offspring became the Chiriguanos. No more expeditions trekked the trails from the sea to the Andes.
Shortly after, Sebastian Cabot a Venetian navigator, commissioned by the King of Spain to follow Magellan's route to the Spice Islands along Patagonia, heard the story of Alejo Garcís expedition from the castaways on the Brazilian coast, and deviated his course into the River Plate, and went upstream along the Paraná River, establishing the first settlement at the confluence of the Carcaraña and Paraná Rivers, he named it Holy Spirit (Sancti Spiritu) the first Spanish settlement in Southern South America, and in what would become Argentina (I wrote about this in another post) he sailed north, reached the Paraguay River and was shown gold, copper, and silver from Alejo Garcís trek. A group set out by foot from Sancti Spiritu in search of Peru they brought back some gold trinkets from the natives that lived in the Northeastern Argentine Andean foothills, and originated the myth of the City of Caesars inhabited by white people in Patagonia (I've never written a detailed post about this myth, I will do so shortly).
Prehistoric Migrations of the Guaraní Natives
French naturalist Alcides D'Orbigny, wrote in the 1830s about the Guarani-Inca interactios. In his work L'homme américain (see Vol II, p. 339), he mentions the Chiriguanos as a Guarani tribe established in the Andean foothills in Bolivia. The Incas ruled by Inca Yupanqui attempted to subdue them and conquer the territory in 1430. He then cites the Inca Garcilaso's version of this military campaign (see Chap. XIV p. 271) in his Comentarios Reales. Garcilaso tells how the Inca Emperor led his men in rafts down the river into Moxos (or land of the Musus) two hundred leagues or 1,000 km - 620 mi. from Cusco, they navigated a river which flows into the Paraguay River far to the east. After many battles the Chunchu natives were reduced to being vassals of the Incas and paid tribute until the death of the last Inca at the hands of the Spaniards. However, the Musus were not subdued. They did not become vassals but, instead, allowed the Incas to settle in their territory. This probably took place around 1470 AD. In another post, I mentioned Yupanqui's voyage to Polynesia.
The migration that didn't happen. The Musus were associated and confederates of the Incas, living in peace and friendship until the time of Huayna Capac (1524) when the Inca expatriates living in Moxos decided to return to Cusco with their families as their work with the Moxos, civilizing them, was complete. But when they were ready to head back, they learned that the Spaniards had defeated the Incas and killed their emperor. So, they opted to remain with the Musus.
Nordenskjöd in his book The Guarani Invasion of the Inca Empire in the Sixteenth Century: An Historical Indian Migration" tells about all of these events (Alejo Garcí and the wars). His book includes the following map which shows Asunció (lower right) on the Paraguay River, Corumba (right, 20° Lat) and the area visited by Alejo Garcí It also shows some Inca fortifications along the border between the highlands and the Amazonian jungle.
Nordenskjöd concludes that "(1) That at the beginning of the sixteenth century numerous Guarani Indians emigrated from the Eio Parana and the Eio Paraguay to Guarayos and to the outermost valleys of the Andes towards the Gran Chaco. (2) That the districts in which these Indians settled were not previously inhabited by Guarani Indians, but chiefly by Arawaks. (3) That Alejo Garcia, the Portuguese, was in the Inca Empire before Pizarro."
Other early Reports of the Trail
The Spaniards continued the work of the Incas, and advanced into the Bolivian lowlands in wars with the Guarani people there during the 1500s and 1600s. But let's return to the expedition that followed Alejo García. After founding the city of Buenos Aires in 1536, the leader of the enterprise, Pedro de Mendoza, very ill from syphilis had returned to Spain, dying at sea. The fledgling town lacked food and the natives attacked it constantly. The settlers decided to look for a better spot upstream, along the Paraná River. A group led by Juan de Ayolas sailed along the Paraná and Paraguay Rivers, like Cabot had done ten years earlier. Ayolas reached the area where Aunción, capital of Paraguay is now located, and after defeating the Guarani there, learned about the Incas and the Payagua natives further upstream. Pedro de Lozano in his History of the Rio de la Plata Vol II p. 120 tells us that Ayolas sailed upstream to to the Port of Candelaria (21° 5' Lat S) and set out in 1537 westwards with 300 natives and gave orders for his men to wait for him for 6 months. He vanished in the Chaco jungle and was never heard of again. His men founded Asunción and moved the settlers from Buenos Aires to the new city.
Ulrich Schmidl, one of the members of Mendoza's expedition also described Ayolas' expedition from Candelaria, by the San Fernando Hill on the Paraguay River, known as Ytapucú-guazú by the Guarani.
The account of Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca written in 1542 suggests that around 1515, a group of Guarani people marched west to loot the Inca empire. A prisoner he interviewed (see chapter LX, p. 299), from Itatí told him that when he was young his Guarani "people made a great calling and gathered Indians from the whole land, and went to the land, the land that was inland, and he went with his father and relatives to make war to those living there and they took and robbed the gold and silver plates and jewels they owned; and having reached the first settlements, they immediately began to wage war and kill many Indians, and many towns were depopulated and they fled to gather in the towns further inland; and then the nations of all that land gathered together and came against them [the Guarani people]... and they routed and killed many of them... and... followed them and took the passes and killed all... and that among those who escaped this Indian was saved, and that the majority remained in those mountains through which they had passed."
But the "trail" does not seem to be a well trodden one: "He was asked if he knew well the road by which he and those of his nation went to the inland settlements. He said that it had been a long time since he had traveled that road, and when his people passed through, they were clearing the way, cutting down trees, and clearing the land, which was very rugged, and that it seemed to him that those roads would soon be overgrown with scrub and weeds, because he never saw them again, nor traveled them; but he thought that once he started to go along the road he would be able to follow it, and that the road begins from a high, round mountain, which is within sight of this port of the Kings." Puerto de Reyes (Port of Kings) was close to modern Cáceres Bay, in Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil (see map in Google Maps). It can also be seen in the map further up, at 18° Lat. S, upper right side of the image.
Historian Hernani Donato in his 1971 publication Pearibú describes it during the early days of Portuguese occupation and colonization of Brazil, and says it had traffic along it, linking Spanish Paraguay and Guaira with the Portuguese settlements in Sao Paulo. However in 1553 the Portuguese authorities closed it to prevent the Jesuits going inland to pacify and convert the natives, and the Spaniards (Castellanos) coming down to the coast and threaten the Portuguese settlements. Later in the 1600s, the Portuguese slavers, who raided the Guarani villages in Paraguay to enslave their inhabitants, expeditions known as "Bandeiras", used the trail to carry invade, and to bring back slaves to the coast. Donato suggests the trail was built by the Incas, who were great engineers and road builders (the Chapaq Ñan was a vast road system spanned their empire and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Argentina) they also embodied the civilizing white man, Sumé. Luiz Galdino in his book Os Incas No Brasil also proposed an Inca origin for the trail.
Serious research like the paper by Colavite, A. P., & Barros, M. V. F. (2017) (Geoprocessamento aplicado a estudos do caminho de Pearibu. Revista Da ANPEGE, 5(05), 86–105. https://doi.org/10.5418/RA2009.0505.0007) includes a survey of the trail, and several maps showing its course, as well as its current state of preservation.
I am still unconvinced about its great antiquity. It was probably a trade trail linking the Andes with the sea, but it was not frictionless, warring tribes, disease, floods and jungle must have been serious obstacles along the way.
Further reading
Rocha A., Caminos de Pearibu Historia e Memoria
Caminhos de Pearibu, Parana State official webpage (Portuguese).
Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall ©
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