Abstract
In the second half of the seventeenth century, the expansion of the economy and of colonial frontiers in the captaincies to the north of the Estado do Brasil led to new zones of contact and friction with Indigenous populations. The tensions were exacerbated by the outcomes of the Dutch-Portuguese War (1630–1654), which irreversibly involved a large number of Indigenous populations. From 1651 to 1704, the sertão was the stage of numerous conflicts between Indigenous groups and Portuguese Brazilians. These conflicts were collectively known as Guerra dos Bárbaros, that is, the “Barbarians’ War”. This text seeks to understand this process, considering how the Portuguese settlers and the monarchy interpret the Indigenous war, as well as analyzing the Indigenous strategies of resistance to colonization.
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Notes
- 1.
This region is now known as the Northeast of Brazil.
- 2.
João Capistrano de Abreu, Capítulos de História Colonial & Os Caminhos Antigos e o Povoamento do Brasil (Brasília: Editora da UNB, 1963), pp. 147 ss.
- 3.
Francisco Borges de Barros, Bandeirantes e sertanistas bahianos (Salvador: Imprensa Oficial do Estado, 1919), p. 124; Pedro Calmon, História da Casa da Torre (Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio Editora, 1939), p. 84; Gustavo Barroso, À Margem da História do Ceará (Fortaleza: Imprensa Universitária do Ceará, 1962), pp. 56–57 and Horácio de Almeida, “Confederação dos Cariris ou Guerra dos Bárbaros”, Revista do Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro, vol. 316 (Rio de janeiro, 1977), pp. 407–433, among others, refer to a “confederation of Cariri peoples”—a notion adopted by several textbooks. This is not only a self-imposed reference to a poem written by Gonçalves de Magalhães in 1856 (on an equally imagined Confederation of Tamoio Peoples) but also a product of the view that all Tapuia peoples from the semi-arid lands could be subsumed under one ethnic group: the Cariris. However, as Câmara Cascudo has pointed out, “there was neither a common plan, nor a unified leadership. Those tribes fought either as allies or independently. Other regions were still silent, waking up to death as fire was ceasing where it had started before”. Cascudo prefers to call these conflicts the “Indians’ War” (Luís da Câmara Cascudo, História do Rio Grande do Norte, Rio de Janeiro: Ministério da Educação e Cultura, 1955, pp. 96–100). Historians Carlos Studart Filho (Páginas de história e pré-história, Fortaleza: Instituto do Ceará, 1966), writing about Ceará, and Olavo de Medeiros Filho (Aconteceu na capitania do Rio Grande, Natal: Depto. Estadual de Imprensa, 1997), writing about Rio Grande do Norte, update this local perspective in modern terms. Affonso de E. Taunay includes this episode in his História geral das bandeiras Paulistas (São Paulo, H.L. Canton, 11 vols., 1924–1950). A second line of thought seeks to produce a history of Indigenous resistance in line with new perspectives of the history of Indigenous peoples in the works of John Hemming (Red Gold. The Conquest of the Brazilian Indians, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978) and Maria Idalina da Cruz Pires (Guerra dos Bárbaros: resistência indígena e conflitos no Nordeste colonial, Recife: Fundarpe, 1990). Pires approaches the episode known as the “Açu War” and does not assess the War in a broader sense. Hemming, on his turn, is concerned with a history of Portuguese conquests and the disappearing of “Brazilian Indians”, but is more focused on the current situation. In a work published in 2000, I approach a succession of battles and clashes in the context known as the Barbarian War, seeking to grasp the evolution of military strategy in the mesological setting of the sertão and its connections with the policies implemented by the Crown for Indigenous peoples. Cf. Pedro Puntoni, A Guerra dos Bárbaros: povos indígenas e a colonização do sertão Norte do Brasil, 1650–1720 (São Paulo: Hucitec/Edusp, 2000).
- 4.
Recôncavo is the name given to the Bay of All Saints and its surrounding lands. On the Recôncavo, see chapter 4 of Stuart Schwartz’s book, Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society: Bahia, 1550–1835 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 75 ss.
- 5.
John Hemming, Red Gold. The Conquest of the Brazilian Indians (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), pp. 346–347.
- 6.
As Nathan Wachtel did in his classic study about Peru (WACHTEL, 1971).
- 7.
Ronaldo Vainfas, “Idolatrias e milenarismos: a resistência indígena nas Américas”, Revista Estudos Históricos, 9 (Rio de Janeiro, 1992), 29–43.
- 8.
Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, A Inconstância da Alma Selvagem e Outros Ensaios de Antropologia (São Paulo: Cosac & Naify, 2002), pp. 183–263.
- 9.
Pedro Puntoni, “Tupi ou não tupi? Uma contribuição para a etnohistória dos povos indígenas no Brasil colonial”, Ethnos, vol. 2 (Recife, 1997), pp. 5–19.
- 10.
Florestan Fernandes, “Organização Social das tribos tupis”, in S. B. de Holanda (org.), História Geral da Civilização Brasileira, vol. 1 (São Paulo, 1968), p. 85.
- 11.
John M. Monteiro, “O desafio da história indígena no Brasil” in A. L. Silva and L. D. Grupione (orgs.), A temática indígena na escola. novos subsídios para professores de 1° e 2° graus (Brasília: MEC/Mari/Unesco, 1995), pp. 221–236 and Marcos Galindo, O Governo das Almas: A Expansão colonial no país dos Tapuia 1651 1798 (São Paulo: Hucitec, 2017), p. 27.
- 12.
Cf. Maria Regina Celestino de Almeida, Metamorfoses indígenas: identidade e cultura nas aldeias coloniais do Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro: Arquivo Nacional, 2003), pp. 33–34. This expression was incorporated based on Almeida’s reading of some suggestions by Steve Stern, for whom “explicit analysis of preexisting patterns of resistant adaptation is an essential prerequisite for any adequate theory or explanation of peasant rebellion”. For Stern, a rebellion is understood “as a short-term variant within a long-term process of resistance and accommodation to authority”, Steve Stern (ed.), Resistance, Rebellion and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant Word, 18th to 20th Centuries (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), p. 11.
- 13.
Florestan Fernandes, Circuito Fechado (São Paulo: Hucitec, 1976), p. 18.
- 14.
Luiz Felipe de Alencastro, Os Luso-brasileiros em Angola: constituição do espaço econômico brasileiro no Atlântico Sul, 1550–1700 (Campinas: UNICAMP/tese de livre-docência, 1994), pp. 52–60.
- 15.
Joseph Höffner, Colonização e Evangelho: ética da colonização espanhola no Século de Ouro, trad. port. (Rio de Janeiro: Presença, 1977), pp. 216–243 e 317–335 and Beatriz Beatriz Perrone-Moisés, “A guerra justa em Portugal no século XVI”, Revista da Sociedade Brasileira de Pesquisa Histórica, São Paulo, 5 (1990), 5–10.
- 16.
Agostinho Marques Perdigão Malheiro, A Escravidão no Brasil: ensaio histórico-jurídico-social, vol. 2 (São Paulo: ed. Cultura, 1944), pp. 145–269 and Georg Thomas, Política Indigenista dos Portugueses no Brasil, trad. port. (São Paulo: Loyola, 1982), pp. 48 ss.
- 17.
Beatriz Perrone-Moisés, “Índios livres e índios escravos. os princípios da legislação indigenista do período colonial (séculos XVI a XVIII)”, in Manuela Carneiro da Cunha (org.), História dos Índios no Brasil (São Paulo: Cia. das Letras, 1992), p. 117.
- 18.
João Francisco Lisboa, Jornal de Timon, vol. 3, cap. 9 (Lisboa, 1858), p. 85.
- 19.
Pedro Puntoni, “Tupi ou não tupi? Uma contribuição para a etnohistória dos povos indígenas no Brasil colonial”, Ethnos, vol. 2 (Recife, 1997), pp. 5–19.
- 20.
Carta de Francisco Barreto ao rei, Documentos Históricos da Biblioteca Nacional (DH), no. 4 (Rio de Janeiro, 1658), pp. 356–357.
- 21.
Regimento do capitão Bartolomeu Aires, 31/01/1658, DH 4, 64–75 and 77–79.
- 22.
Carta ao capitão-mor de São Vicente, Manuel de Souza da Silva, 21/09/1657, DH 3, 395.
- 23.
Carta ao rei, 24/01/1656, DH 4, 277–279.
- 24.
Regimento de Tomé Dias Lassos, 14/02/1662, DH 5, 338–341.
- 25.
Proposta de Alexandre de Souza Freire tomada em assento no dia 4/03/1669, DH 3, 205–216.
- 26.
João Lopes Serra, “Vida o Paneguirico funebre al senor Affonso Furtado Castro do Rio Mendonça, Bahia, 1676”, publicado por Stuart Schwartz, A Governor and his image in baroque Brazil, the funeral eulogy os Afonso Furtado de Castro do Rio de Mendonça by… (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1979), p. 72 and Sebastião da Rocha PIita, História da América Portuguesa desde o ano de 1500 de seu descobrimento até ao de 1724 (1730) (São Paulo: Edusp/Itatiaia, 1976), p. 181.
- 27.
Carta do governador geral para Francisco Dias d’Ávila, 08/07/1675, DH 8, 416.
- 28.
16/04/1678, Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino (Lisboa) (AHU), códice (cod.) 245, fl.40.
- 29.
Consulta do Conselho Ultramarino, 02/12/1679, AHU, cod. 252, fls.56v–58.
- 30.
Afonso de E. Taunay, “A Guerra dos Bárbaros”, Revista do Arquivo Municipal, vol. 22 (São Paulo, 1936), p. 31.
- 31.
Carta de Pascoal Gonçalves de Carvalho ao rei, 19/071687, AHU, Rio Grande, caixa 1, 24/Consulta do Conselho Ultramarino, 10/12/1687, AHU, cod. 252, fl.117v; e DH 89, 87–88.
- 32.
Cartas da câmara de Natal em que suplicam socorro, 23/02/1687, Arquivo do Instituto Histórico e Geográfico do Rio Grande do Norte (IHGRN), caixa 65, livro 2, fl.96v–97.
- 33.
Carta de Matias da Cunha para o governador de Pernambuco, 17/06/1687, DH 10, 245.
- 34.
Memorial de Pedro Carrilho de Andrade, 1703, AHU, Pernambuco, caixa 16.
- 35.
Carta de Matias da Cunha à câmara de São Paulo, 19/03/1688, DH 11, 139–140.
- 36.
Carta de Matias da Cunha para a câmara de São Paulo, 10/03/1688, DH 11, 139–140.
- 37.
Edital do capitão-mor do Rio Grande, 11/01/1688, IHGRN, caixa 65, livro 2, fl.107v.
- 38.
Carta de Matias da Cunha para Domingos Jorge Velho, 08/03/1688, DH 10, 262.
- 39.
Carta de Matias da Cunha para o capitão-mor da Paraíba, Amaro Velho Siqueira, 14/03/1688, DH10, 269.
- 40.
Oliveira Vianna, Populações Meridionais do Brasil (São Paulo: José Olympio ed., 1938), p. 83.
- 41.
Evaldo Cabral de Mello, Olinda Restaurada (Rio de Janeiro: Forense/Edusp, 1975), pp. 217–248.
- 42.
Carta de João de Lencastro ao governador de Pernambuco, Fernando Martins Mascarenhas, 11/11/1699, DH 39, 86–92.
- 43.
Carta régia ao governador geral, 10/03/1695, DH 11, 252–254.
- 44.
Relação dos oficiais de milícia pagos que servem na capitania de Pernambuco, por Sebastião de Castro e Caldas, 20/06/1710, AHU, Pernambuco, caixa 17.
- 45.
Carlos Studart Filho, Páginas de história e pré-história (Fortaleza: Instituto do Ceará, 1966), pp. 202–205. This prison fort was founded in 1696 with 20 soldiers under the leadership of João da Mota, and once counted with over 30 black soldiers to guarantee the safety of the local population. It was located 14 leagues above the mouth of the Jaguaribe River, and its construction had been necessary to delimit a frontier for the sertões and to impose respect to the Tapuias. However, “nowadays it is no longer useful, since those streams are now populated by many inhabitants for over 80 to 100 leagues into the sertão, and since the prison fort can no longer defend the mouth of the river standing 14 leagues from it…” This fortification was finally abandoned in 1707. See Consulta do Conselho Ultramarino, 13/08/1696, AHU, Pernambuco, caixa 12.
- 46.
“Roteiro do Maranhão a Goiaz pela capitania do Piahui (século XVIII)”, Revista do Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro, vol. LXII (Rio de janeiro, 1900), 90–91.
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Puntoni, P. (2019). “The Barbarians War”: Colonization and Indigenous Resistance in Brazil (1650–1720). In: Domingos, N., Jerónimo, M.B., Roque, R. (eds) Resistance and Colonialism. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19167-2_6
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