Popularity of The Jangada in The Isolated Brazilian North
The jangada reached Brazil as a part of the rich exchange between India, Africa, China, and Japan, mostly in the two first centuries of the Brazilian colonization by the Portuguese people. It also uses native Brazilian techniques for the cutting and processing of wood, and the weaving of fibers into rope. It comes from the people involved with shipping other people, goods, animals, plants, knowledge, and of course, the knowledge from the sailors of the Indian ocean and the Mozambique coast, who used fishing boats similar to the Brazilian jangada.
The word jangada brings this Asiatic origin. It comes from "jangada", a word from Malayalam and South Asian languages.
Today it appears that the jangadas only show up in the northern region of Brazil starting at Rio Grande do Norte and ending at Piauí for curious historic reasons, because we could have jangada sailors all over the Brazilian coast.
This was due to the systematic elimination of all sailing craft that weren't controlled by the Portuguese, a law applied since the 17th century with the exploration of Minas Gerais (central-southern area of Brazil). The law was in place to halt illegal gold trafficking. This part of the north Brazilian coast was unpopulated and impassable for the transatlantic sailing ships, since it is brushed by the powerful ocean currents from Guyana, which made it very difficult for the European boats to sail in.
The first jangada sailors threw their boats into the sea between the abandon of those centuries and isolation and loneliness, yet they were part of the diverse groups of immigrants that populated the interior of the Brazilian north during the middle of the 17th century, bringing and raising cattle, whose meat fed the mining workers.
With its admirable capacity of sailing upwind, and using the force of the wind to beat the ocean currents, the jangada found this part of the Brazilian coast as its ideal place, until the arrival of motorized boats which made (curiously, a few, until today) ports since the 19th century.
Knowledge of constructing this family of artisan watercraft is nearing extinction - although there are still communities of fishermen present from the original group to occupy the Brazilian coast, the traditional jangada is no longer built from logs of varying size. The current jangada is made from industrial wooden boards, or formed with mechanical cutting instruments.
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