Jose de Anchieta

Midway through our tour we stopped in Sao Paulo's historical city center, which is almost 500 years old. A Jesuit missionary named Jose de Anchieta was the founder of Sao Paulo, and you can still see some of the traces of the original cob and clay buildings he laid down almost 450 years ago. It's astonishing...and so was his life, spent converting hundreds of thousands of native Americans to Christianity. You can read about his life here... I've always admired people who set out into the wilderness without really knowing where they were headed. Although I rarely romanticize colonialism in any form, and the idea of 16th century missionaries converting the native Americans to Christianity doesn't sit particularly well with me, I still find myself thinking about what this man's life must have been like. Can you imagine landing on a new world with nothing but your book and convictions?
Here's Encyclopedia Brittanica's brief bio:

José de Anchieta, (born March 19, 1534, Canary Islands, Spain—died June 9, 1597, Espírito Santo, Brazil), Portuguese Jesuit acclaimed as a poet, dramatist, and scholar. He is considered one of the founders of the national literature of Brazil and is credited with converting more than a million Indians.
Anchieta came from a prominent Portuguese family and was even thought to be related to the founder of the Jesuit order, St. Ignatius Loyola. He was educated in Portugal and entered the Society of Jesus in 1551. He first arrived in Brazil on July 13, 1553....

Here's more from this site: http://www.manresa-sj.org/stamps/1_Anchieta.htm

The Steps of Anchieta (Os Passos de Anchieta) is one of the first Christian roads of the Americas. It is also a project of local people to reestablish and maintain this tourist, environmental, cultural, religious, and historical route. The Steps of Anchieta is a reconstruction of the 60 mile route that José Anchieta walked every 14 days along the coastline of the State of Espiritu Santo, between the Town of Rerigtiba, where lived for the ten last years of his life with the Temiminós Indians, and the Colégio de São Tiago in Vitória, where the Jesuits taught catechism and other subjects. The last time he traversed this route was in his funeral cortege, about 3000 natives carrying him the distance. They had nicknamed him Abará-bebe (The Holy Flier) because of the speed with which he walked. In 1998 a group of persons resolved to rescue that route and reestablish it, and then they began a large annual 4-day walk, averaging about 3,000 participants.