Colonists gradually moved west into the interior. Accompanying the first governor general in 1549 were members of the newly founded order of Jesuits. In their mission to convert the Indians, they were often the first European presence in new regions far from the coast. They frequently clashed with adventurers also pressing inland (in great expeditions known as bandeiras) to find silver and gold or to capture Indians as slaves. These two groups, with their very different motives, brought a Portuguese presence far beyond the Tordesillas Line. By the late 17th century, the territory of Brazil encompassed the entire basin of the Amazon as far west as the Andes. At the same time, Portuguese colonists had moved south along the coast beyond Rio de Janeiro. The Portuguese Colony of Sacramento was established on the River Plate in 1680, provoking a century of Spanish-Portuguese border conflicts in what is now Uruguay. Meanwhile, the use of the Portuguese language gradually gave the central region of South America an identity and a culture distinct from that of its Spanish neighbours.