Originally the town was a large village of the Tupinambá tribe. The first
Europeans to see it were the French, in 1612, who intended to make it the
centre of a colony named Equinoctial France. They built a fort named Saint Louis after the contemporary
King Louis XIII and his Saintly ancestor King Louis IX. The settlement was
conquered for Portugal by Jerônimo de Albuquerque in 1615, when it was renamed São Luís. There had been little time
for the French to build a city. This has led to some controversy as to the
actual
