The population of the region date from the sixteenth century, when they were donated Sesmarias Capitania of Rio de Janeiro. In 1568, Bras Cubas, provider of Finance and Real captaincies of Sao Vicente and Santo Amaro received in donation from Sesmarias, 3,000 fathoms of land from the sea and tested to 9,000 fathoms of land from the river bottom to Meriti, or more properly "Miriti," cutting the piacabal the village Jacotinga. Outro dos agraciados foi Cristovao Monteiro que recebeu terras as margens do rio Iguacu. A business opportunity that the occupation of the site was the cultivation of sugar cane. The corn, beans and rice have become also important auxiliaries during this period.
In the XVII and XVIII, the administrative division of Iguacu (Iguassu in archaic spelling, now municipality of Nova Iguacu) followed church criteria, i.e. the Church took the legal and religious responsibility, managing the secondary chapels: the parishes. Thus, Pilar, Merit, and Star jacutinga, areas that currently occupy the territory of Duque de Caxias, belonged to Iguacu. The region has become an important point of transition of wealth from the inside: the gold of Minas Gerais, discovered at the farm crisis of sugar, coffee and the Vale do Paraíba Fluminense, which represented approximately 70Percent of the Brazilian economy in season.
As the land in ways few, precarious and dangerous, nothing more natural that the transport was done by the rivers, where they exist. The rivers abound in the region, and integrated with the Guanabara Bay, the site was a point of union between it and the ways which rose the mountain toward the interior. The Port of Star was the most important of this period in March. On his return, a camp that grew in the nineteenth century was transformed into city.
Despite the decline of mining, the region has remained as a point of rest and supply tropeiros, as a place of transit and transhipment of goods. Until the nineteenth century, progress
