Converting shapefile to raster: Character attributes

I've got a shapefile that I would like to convert into a raster, but the trick is that the attribute I want a raster version of is character data. I'm familiar with geoprocessing using GDAL (in the command line) and R, so solutions using either of those two are preferred. However, I have access to QGIS if necessary, and even ArcMap.

I'm using this shapefile. It contains polygons of municipalities in part of Brazil. The attribute NAME_2 is the name of the municipality, and I want a raster version of that.

I know that you can't make a raster with characters, so I created a numeric version of NAME_2 in R by doing

library("rgdal")
munisCrop.shape = readOGR(dsn=getwd(), layer="munisCrop")      # Read shapefile
munisCrop.shape$NAME_2_NUM = as.numeric(munisCrop.shape$NAME_2)  # Make new attribute
writeOGR(obj = munisCrop.shape, dsn = getwd(), layer = "munisCrop", driver = "ESRI Shapefile") # Save new version of shapefile

Values in munisCrop.shape$NAME_2_NUM range from 1 to 787.

I was hoping to then use gdal_rasterize on my command line (GDAL version 1.10.1 on Mac OS X 10.9.2) to make a raster version of the shapefile. Here's the code I was trying (separate lines for clarity):

gdal_rasterize -of GTiff -ot UInt32 -a NAME_2_NUM \
               -tr 0.0002777778 0.0002777778 -ot BYTE \

               -co COMPRESS=LZW -l munisCrop \
               munisCrop.shp munisCrop.tif

This completes easily enough. However, when viewing munisCrop.tif in QGIS, I see that the data range from 0 to 255. This is confirmed in R with

library("raster")
munisCrop.raster = raster("munisCrop.tif")
sort(unique(getValues(munisCrop.raster)))

0 makes sense, as NA values got converted to that. However, the maximum value of 255 is no good; remember, the maximum value of that attribute in the shapefile is 787.

I think I understand why this is happening but can somebody really explain it to me and suggest a workaround?

I've tried various options in gdal_rasterize instead of -ot UInt32 (for example, BYTE), and the result is always the same. I've also tried rasterizing it in R:

munisCrop.blankraster = raster(ext = extent(munisCrop.shp), 
                               resolution = 0.0002777778, 
                               crs = projection(munisCrop.shp) 
                               ) 
munisCrop.Rraster = rasterize(x = munisCrop.shp, 
                              y = munisCrop.blankraster, 
                              field = "NAME_2_NUM" 
                              )

But that seems like it takes forever. gdal_rasterize is way faster (a matter of seconds instead of... indefinite), so I'd love a solution using that.