Today's location of the municipality of Governador Valadares was found to be inhabited by Amerindians for at least 10 thousand years and registers from the first explorers od the region after brazil's discovery, in 1500, provides us information that they were still numerous on that occasion. The exploration of this region began in the XVI century, with expeditions like the ones from Sebastião Fernandes Tourinho, that went by the Rio Doce route in the search for precious metals. Fernandes Tourinho went through the inverse route of the river until finding the Santo Antônio River, but the settlement was prohibited on the beginning of the XVII century, due to the efforts to not having ways to have illegal gold extraction on the Diamantina, Minas Gerais region.