The Guaycurus persevered in the same hostility, although less frequent and less destructive, as will presently be detailed, till the year 1791, when the principal captains of this nation, Emavidi Channe, who assumed the name of Paulo Joaquim Ferreira, and Queyma, who took the name of Joam Queyma d’Albuquerque, accompanied by seventeen of their warriors, with a Brazilian creole, their slave or prisoner, for an interpreter, spontaneously came to solicit peace at Villa Bella, where, in the palace of the governor, and in the presence of the senate, they made a treaty of perpetual friendship and alliance, agreeing to become the vassals of his faithful Majesty. Letters-patent, securing to them the necessary privileges, were granted, which shall be transcribed when we conclude the history of this important nation. We will now return to the proceedings of the Paulistas, in reference to the early colonization of this province. In the year 1727, the governor Menezes arrived at the new arraial, and gave it the title of Villa Real (royal town) of Cuiaba. The following year he left this town, and proceeded up the river Tocoary, to which was transferred, in 1729, the navigation from the Embotatiu, with the intention of avoiding, at least in part, the attacks of the Indians. From this change, however, no advantage resulted, in consequence of the trifling distance between these two rivers. The first division which left Cuiaba in the year 1730, with upwards of sixty arrobas (thirty-two pounds each) of gold, accompanied by Doctor Antonio Alvez Peixoto, who had accomplished the period of his ouvidorship, was attacked in the Pantanos,[21] by an armada of eighty war canoes, manned by more than eight hundred Indians. The pillage lasted for a considerable time, and only seventeen Christians escaped by swimming to land. It was computed that these warlike Indians lost more than four hundred combatants on this occasion. Some gold, which they carried off, with many prisoners, the Payagoas parted with at such a low price in the city of Assumption, that an Indian exchanged, with one Donna Quiteria de Banhos, six pounds weight for a pewter plate. At this period, a singular branch of commerce flourished in this city, which was in the disposal of cats, at exorbitant prices; the first pair of those animals that were brought to Assumption were sold for one pound of gold, and their progeny at thirty oitavas, and so on, till the augmentation of this race proportionably reduced their value. The extraordinary value of cats in this place, was occasioned by the houses and stores of Indian corn, &c. being infested with prodigious swarms of rats.