ABSTRACT
Gold Mining 67 patched them to convents in Portugal or Madeira.20 With the decline in mining, the establishment of a more balanced economy, and greater security for potential settlers, the white female population of the captaincy increased. By 1776 the sex ratio among the white population of 1,339 males to one thousand females does not distinguish Minas Gerais radically from the coastal enclaves. During the early part of the century, however, male predominance was characteristic of the black as well as the white populations. Miners* needs for male slaves may have accentuated the sexual imbalance of the Atlantic slave trade, generally accepted at two to one in favor of males, especially during the years of greatest mining production.21 In Salvador drastic increases in the price of male slaves, directly attributable to mining needs, were not matched by corresponding increases in the cost of female slaves. Records of slaves entering Minas Gerais suggest a numerical predominance of males. This is confirmed by the fiscal records. In 1719 on the heavily mined Morro of Vila Rica, 91 percent of the slave population was male. All but one of the 77 slaves of Captain Paulo Rodrigues Durao, a miner in the parish of Inficionado, were male. Master of the Field Paschoal da Silva, a powerful personality in Vila Rica in 1719, possessed 48 slaves of whom only two or three were female.22 It appears that miners with limited capital bought males rather than females; the proportion of females was larger in the holdings of more prosperous miners. Only with the census of 1776 are figures available on the sexual composition of the population. This census did not distinguish between slaves and freedmen. In the overall population of people of African descent (249,105), 63.4 percent were male. Within the category of blacks (pretos) 117,171 or 70.2 percent were male. In contrast, among mulattos (pardos) there was a female majority: 41,317 females, 40,793 males. The 1786 census, the first indicating distinctions based on pigmentation, sex, and civil status, shows that 58.7 percent (16.4 percent pardos; 42.3 percent pretos) of the colored population (297,183) was male. Among total slaves (174,135), 66.8 percent were male. But, with the exception of the single category of black slaves
