Chapter 1 foregrounds the influence of Euclides da Cunha's 1902 book about the Canudos War, Os Sertões, and provides background on the tenentismo movement and the history of Brazil's military in the early twentieth century, culminating in the 1924 São Paulo rebellion that would evolve into the Prestes Column. In many ways, the column was an inheritor of the discourses made famous by Cunha. The leaders of the column invoked Cunha's writing about the landscapes of the backlands, they mimicked his way of describing local people, and they saw themselves as continuing his legacy of bringing mainstream attention to the realities of life in the backlands. As it was in Cunha's depictions of the Canudos War, the prevailing symbolism of the Prestes Column also relied on questions of civilization, backwardness, and the spatial contours of Brazil's future.