Izabelmissagiaoxford

Colonization, Mediation, and Mestizaje in the Borderlands of Nineteenth-
Century Minas Gerais, Brazil
Colonization, Mediation, and Mestizaje in the Border

lands of Nineteenth-Century Minas Gerais, Brazil
Izabel Missagia de Mattos
The [Oxford] Handbook of Borderlands of the Iberian World
Edited by Danna A. Levin Rojo and Cynthia Radding
Print Publication Date: Dec 2019 Subject: History, European History

Online Publication Date: Nov 2019 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199341771.013.15
Abstract and Keywords
This research brings together the colonization of existing indigenous peoples in the
Sertões do Leste (the eastern backlands of Brazil) and the formation of a national Brazil
ian narrative. Violence, extermination, and slavery became frequent in the area dating
from the Carta Régia of 1808, which declared a “Just War” against the “Cannibal Botocu
dos.” Following the Law of Catechesis of 1845, such measures were replaced by the dis
course of “civilization” through mestizaje as an efficient way of liberating land from the
various indigenous groups present in the area, articulated through interrelated socio-
symbolic networks. The issue would be widely discussed in official reports written by mis
sionaries and politicians. In contrast to the contemporary national narratives of Argentina
and Uruguay, constructed on the expansion of territories and the decimation of “savages”
for the advancement of their borders, the experience of “pacification” of the eastern
backlands of Brazil’s interior underpins the incorporation of the idea of mestizaje as a
narrative of national “civilization.”
Keywords: Keywordscatechesis, backlands/Sertões, Botocudos, mestizaje, revolts, ethnogenesis, national narra

tives
THE nineteenth century marks a period during which a large indigenous population “dis
appeared” from the Province of Minas Gerais, as well as other areas of the Brazilian inte
rior, through the processes of border expansion and the apparatus of state policy in rela
tion to the existing population. This same period witnessed the process of construction
and consolidation of a national narrative from which the existence of “savages” was also
erased.1
The category sertão (backlands) was widely adopted in the Portuguese colonial adminis
tration to represent spaces deemed empty of civilization and therefore “deserted.”
Present in social thinking about colonialism and the nation over the centuries, the term
appears in the nineteenth-century chronicles of naturalist travelers to mean “unpopulated
areas in the Brazilian interior.” However, as the French traveler August Saint-Hilaire de
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clared, the term “unpopulated” referred only to “civilized inhabitants,” since “with hea
thens and wild animals” the backlands were “populated even to excess.”2
Nineteenth-century Brazil can be characterized by extreme political heterogeneity, serv

ing as a stage for three different regimes beginning with the Colony (until 1822), passing
through the empire, and ending with the republic (1889). In this process the (p. 414) con
trast between older areas of colonization and new frontiers became increasingly evident,
such as in the southeast of the country where the Sertões do Leste are situated. All these
disparities are reflected in the indigenist legislation that regulated the relationship be
tween indigenous peoples and the state.
Unlike other Latin American nations that were consolidated on the basis of republican
ideas, the sense of belonging to Brazilian nationality was constructed from historiograph
ic and literary reflections that helped create the most important foundational myths dur
ing the imperial period.3 The interest in the country’s interior and its unknown popula
tions can be chiefly observed from the 1870s onward, when a series of writings funda
mental for the country’s history inscribed themselves within an imaginary that sought in
the backlands the bases for an authentic sense of the Brazilian that would forge a nation
al identity.4
With the end of the transatlantic slave trade (1850) and the abolition of slavery (1888)
scarcity of labor in Brazil became acute. At the same time the regulatory instruments of
state policies on indigenous peoples, such as the Law of Landholding (1850) and the Law
of Catechesis (1845), led to the valorization of indigenous lands and contributed to the
problem of “civilization” being conceived and implemented through the same move that
made indigenous peoples lose their collective rights to land ownership, thereby becoming
an amorphous body of national workers.
“Strangers in their own lands,” observed the anthropologist Edgar Roquette-Pinto (1884–
1954) in his exploration of northern Brazil, “the rural workers of Brazil’s interior continue
to live in the disgraceful conditions of disguised servitude.”5 As a matter of fact, because
they favored only a small section of the landowning population, exclusive political prac
tices contributed to creating a situation of instability that became fertile ground for the
outbreak of revolts in which excluded social groups, including indigenous people, partici
pated during this period.6
The border zone under discussion had remained “off limits” and untouched during the
colonial period due to the prohibition against opening roads and river navigation decreed
by seven royal acts between 1725 and 1758, which aimed to prevent the smuggling of the
gold discovered in the Espinhaço hills, where Vila Rica had been established as the
provincial capital.7 Such measures preserved the environmental conditions that could
shelter indigenous peoples who, in continuing to fight for survival and local autonomy,
served as living walls of defense against incursions into the region.8
Page 2 of 32

Peoples inhabiting the area had diverse geographical and linguistic origins, although they
were socially and territorially interlinked through dynamic relationships of conflict and al
liance. The complexity of the sociopolitical forms in this border region leads to agree with
the proposal of certain geographers for “a kind of Geo-History” through interdisciplinary
research.9 This was to comprehend nomadic and mobile spaces. To better characterize
these spaces, one should also incorporate recent contributions from ethnology in order to
recover, to a certain extent, the point of view of indigenous peoples.
The Sertões do Leste make up an ethnographical area comprising portions of the current
states of Minas Gerais, Espírito Santo, and Bahia and can be categorized by the phenome
non of interdigitation or a multi-ethnic web—that is, when the idea of “territory” (p. 415)
does not coincide with that of an “ethnic group.”10 Amazonian ethnology has shown the
importance of the role of relations of affinity on “processes of symbolic exchange (war,
cannibalism, hunting, shamanism, funeral rites)” that influence identity formation.11 In
the light of these discoveries one can comprehend the transformative processes of peo
ples living in that densely forested region, speakers of Maxakali, Puri, and Botocudo, all
branches of the Macro-Jê linguistic-cultural stock. Despite the apparent similarity of their
livelihood, based on hunting and gathering, these peoples were observed and described
in their conflicting interrelationships through inimical witchcraft and wars of revenge,
which did not impede the preservation of some of their diverse socio-linguistic heritage
even to the present day. On the contrary, the plentiful descriptions of these peoples in the
extant sources reveal a cosmopolitics.12 Cosmopolitics produces cultural differences un
derlying the characteristic identity dynamics of their historical experience. Recent ethno
logical proposals lead us to interpret such dynamics according to the logic that drives
both the reconfiguration of identity through alliance/revenge relationships and the articu
lation of spatial network-territories, to show that Amerindian cosmopolitics generates a
model of nomadic territoriality.
Food security constitutes a pillar of the political autonomy of peoples in border regions.13
Amerindians were the eminent masters of those dense forests, attributing to their consti
tutive elements meanings that could also nourish their social and symbolic lives, thereby
creating an autonomous system. They developed combat strategies using their knowledge
of the environment which proved effective in their heroic attempts at resistance, called
“guerrilha” tactics by the Portuguese, who were terrified by the supremacy of the Botocu
dos.14
Different denominations such as Kamakã, Pataxó, Malali, Macuni, Monoxó, Cumanoxó,

Maxacali, Puri, Pojichá, Aranã, Naknenuk and others appear in sources from throughout
the 1800s.15 Some of these peoples were named according to the words for “enemies” in
native languages, others received the nicknames of some of their recognized leaders or
came to be known by pejorative Portuguese epithets, as was the case of the Botocudos—a
generic designation used by Luso-Brazilians to identify several of the aforementioned
groups.
Page 3 of 32

The flow of indigenous people from the coastal region as they fled frequent conflicts with
colonists provoked intense disputes between “enemy” peoples linked to this wider net
work of sociability.16 Notwithstanding the importance given to the constitutive role of re
venge in the study of Amerindian socialities, the growing scarcity of areas for hunting and
roaming surely stimulated “domestic wars” and the establishment of alliances with the
first colonists.
In addition to physical violence, the bellicose language that marked the relationships be
tween indigenous people and Europeans also characterized relations among the indige
nous groups themselves. Several contemporary observers describe the Botocudos’
predilection for vengeance, with Auguste de Saint-Hilaire writing that he heard from a
landowner in the region that “the botocudos […] resemble the French, all they like is
war.”17 The imperative of constructing the cosmos itself through affinity relationships,
which led to war (both cosmological and political) and produced diversification, once
(p. 416) placed in the context of the expansion of national borders into indigenous territo
ry, motivated cruel and widely-documented extermination expeditions and fed “fratrici
dal” war.18 With the advancing border, Botocudo subgroups gradually changed in diverse
ways, according to how they articulated with groups of escaped slaves or mestizo pio
neers who progressively became part of the region’s landscape and disputed indigenous
lands with increasing violence.19
The history of these peoples, particularly those who spoke Botocudo and Maxacali and
were articulated in network-territories, in turn, was interlinked with non-indigenous pop
ulations such as colonists, escaped slaves and freedmen, administrators and
missionaries.20 To reconstruct their history, one must bear in mind the difficulties that in
digenous groups represented for colonizing fronts, which were recorded in different
sources, although the suppression of their memory was integral to long-term political and
ideological projects at the service of political and state interests. This ethnographical re
constitution focuses on social relationships and processes of mediation between the dif
ferent worlds inscribed in the colonial situation—a concept adopted here to consider the
processes of constituting “ethnic objects” through mechanisms exterior to these peoples
themselves.21
Arms and Arguments of Civilization

With the decline of mining in Vila Rica, the region came to be conceived in the colonial
imaginary as a kind of Eldorado. It became the bloody stage for military policies of pacifi
cation of the indomitable Botocudos through an Offensive War (1808–1831) decreed after
the Portuguese Court was transferred to Rio de Janeiro (1808–1815) due to the threat
posed by the Napoleonic invasion. In practice, the colonization of those Sertões had thus
far been spontaneous, as shown by Hal Langfur and Haruf Espíndola.22 The significance
of this decree emerges in the recent military historiography of the “ancien régime of the
tropics.”23
Page 4 of 32

The extemporaneous declaration of “Just War” against the “cannibal Botocudos” who “in
fested” the forests of Rio Doce can be interpreted through the judicial explanation pro
posed by António M. Hespanha based on the writings of the Jesuit jurist and theologian
Luís de Molina (1535–1600), who highlighted, among the foundations of the Just War in
the colonial period, the injustices derived from the wars among the “savages”
themselves.24 Although anthropophagy cannot be indicated as a characteristic of their
cosmopolitics according to several of those observing and studying the Botocudos, canni
balism was repeatedly used in the body of that decree as one of its principal judicial argu
ments.25
Scholar of Brazilian colonial literature, João Adolfo Hansen analyzed the authority of roy
al power as it was reaffirmed through the institution of Just War, because the king consti
tuted the only figure able to declare such a war out of consideration for his own “just
causes” that demanded “righteous methods.”26 A. M. Hespanha seems to coincide (p. 417)
regarding this sense of the concept, which points to reverence to the king, to the extent
that a decree of this nature heralds, on both sides of the Atlantic, the potency of royal
power, reminding everyone that “there on high, half-asleep but always latent, is the
suprema puniva potestas of the king.”27
In the context of transferring the Portuguese Court to Brazil, another Just War was de
creed in the captaincy of São Paulo through the “Royal Letter on Botocudo Indians, cul
ture and population of the general areas of Coritiba and Guarapuava.”28 This second de
cree took as its reference the severe measures adopted against the Botocudos of Minas
and targeted the Kaingang, peoples of a different linguistic family but who were also re
lated to the Macro-Jê cultural-linguistic stock. Because they decorated their lips with
wooden discs, they received the same derogatory nickname of Botocudos, which suggests
their alleged “rudeness” so heavily mentioned in the decree. The opening up of the back
lands of Guarapuava—located in an area bordering the viceroyalty of Peru, in what is now
Argentina—would, as in Rio Doce, employ the double strategy of wiping out indigenous
“enemies” and enticement of “friendly” indigenous peoples, in order to encourage nation
al and foreign colonization.29 It is important to note that the occupation of those border
lands through declarations of war allowed the conquered areas to be taken as uninhabit
ed and strategically distributed for the settlement and defense of the country.30
Andrés Reséndez also demonstrates how the allegation of cannibalism was used to justify
capturing indigenous people to be exploited as slave labor in Spanish colonization. The
widespread capture of Indians for slavery in Spanish America would decline drastically
throughout the second half of the sixteenth century.31 The trading of Botocudo (kruk) chil
dren, repeatedly documented in nineteenth-century sources, became naturalized in the
regional imaginary as a salvation measure. Most travelers who passed through the region
took one of these children along, and they even left a record of their sad fates.32
Much to the contrary of the Turnerian notion of the border as a space of renovation, hope
and life, the Sertão referred to an environment full of dangers, with poisonous animals,
savage indigenous people and shadowy forests, in which mystery and death would con
Page 5 of 32

stantly threaten the adventurer. The nineteenth-century concept of Sertão signified not
only the antithesis of “Christian” space but also the absence of authority, a place where
only “barbarism” could reign.33 Sociologist Ivan Vellasco observed that, for the Province
of Minas during that period, “the place of violence and savagery is the backlands; in op
position to that, justice.” In a document he analyzed, a witness cautioned defendants ac
cused of assault that they “were not in the backlands to practice such barbaric and inhu
mane violence in the face of justice.”34
In force since the Directorate of Indians of 175735 and inspired by the 1755 legislation
that established indigenous people’s freedom, indigenist laws were not adopted in the ad
ministration of natives in the backlands. As a matter of fact, the evident anti-indigenous
tendency in the imperial politics of Minas has its roots in colonial times, when “the fear of
indigenous actions subverted the judicial body, because laws such as the Directorate of
Indians seemed, in daily life, like empty words.”36
Within the belligerent and violent frame that marked the beginning of the nine
(p. 418)
teenth century for the people of the Sertões do Leste, it is still possible to relate the expe
riences of the “pacification” of that period in Minas Gerais to the comparable process led
by the military in the pampas of Argentina and Uruguay in the mid-nineteenth century.
Through the formation of narratives relating to the nationalities under construction, re
ports of the defeat of barbarism remained in their national imaginaries over a long peri
od.37 Unlike in Argentina, where the process of economic and territorial frontier expan
sion consecrated the extermination of indigenous people as the basis for the foundation of
a civilized European nationality, the role of “mestizaje” for the civilization of the Brazilian
interior configured the historical experiences of indigenous peoples, as was expressed in
the guidelines for a civilizational policy in the backlands. In both experiences the process
of expanding borders provided elements for the elaboration of foundational myths of na
tionality; in the case of Brazil, however, this involved recognizing the existence of the
backlands and developing policies that could transform their excluded peoples into the
national working class,38 although their citizenship has been shaped in uneven and pre
carious conditions. While Argentina focused on the conquest of new territories belonging
to indigenous people in order to repopulate them through European colonization.
The category “mestizaje” investigated here is not restricted to the coeval conception held
by the Provincial Catechesis Service, insofar as for this office the problem of civilizing in
digenous peoples and building the nation was intrinsically associated with a “solution”
through the “racial correction” and “mixing of races.”39 Such preoccupations were also
related to another fundamental problem that did not exist on the same scale in Spanish
America: the pressing need to replace black slave labor, above all in agricultural work.
Such emic conceptions of “race” and “mestizaje” appear in the extensive documents sent
by the general directorate of Indians of the province to the provincial presidency and are
different from another important conception of “mestizaje” used here, which has interest
ed scholars of border processes insofar as it helps to understand the emergence of new
social configurations, also called ethnogenesis.40 An anthropological approach through
the etic category of mestizaje as a symbolic and social phenomenon in fact makes it possi
Page 6 of 32

ble to overcome dualities such as civilized/savage, allowing us to focus on border process
es in which the Other comes to be taken as a relational part of the self.41 Such a focus al
lows the interpretation of border situations involving “colonial processes in all their com
plexity” through a “microphysical reconstruction of civilization” which, according to Guil
laume Boccara, should not exclude, but be accompanied by a “macrophysical [reconstruc
tion] of ethnification.”42
Accounts by soldiers, travelers, naturalists, and civil administrators, among other sources
for the history of native peoples allow us to track the implementation of a “civilizing”
model for the administration of indigenous peoples in the region and this, in turn, renders
more visible the mechanisms behind the Indian population’s gradual “disappearance.”43
The ethnographic tracking of miscegenation empirically described in the Sertões do
Leste, together with other similar experiences in the empire, reveal (p. 419) their funda
mental role for the elaboration of public policies based on ideas of the “mestizo nation,”
later developed by intellectuals working on Brazilian social thought.44
The exploratory and exclusive nature of “pacification through mestizaje,” conceived and
implemented by national authorities in the territories under discussion, promoted terrible
living conditions in the settlements, where frequent episodes of flight and “rebellion” oc
curred.
The contexts for interaction between indigenous groups and other segments of the back
lands society, reveal their experiences within the different border posts established there,
such as the military garrisons and barracks built to fight the Botocudos (1808–1831), the
Mucuri Commerce and Navigation Company (1847–1861), and the Itambacuri Central In
dian Settlement, overseen by Italian Capuchin friars (1873–1911). The behavior of the po
litical, agrarian and slave-owning elite constitutes an important social segment in that
setting—that was always interested in the indigenous workforce—given their political and
ideological role in the nineteenth-century context of disputed national projects. Equally
important were the indigenous and national intermediary figures, such as mestizos and
escaped or freed slaves, who were part of the constantly changing inter-ethnic web.
Garrisons, Barracks, and Indigenist Legislation

(1804–1845)
Through the Just War Decree of May 13, 1808, presídios (military barracks) were created
along rivers for the colonists’ military protection during clashes with indigenous bands.
The preferential use of the term “presídio” (barrack) over “garrison” to designate military
division border posts was noted by naturalist George Wilhem Freireyss’s account on the
Coroado Indians, that related it “to the establishment of criminals who, fleeing the law,
settled among the Indians and, later, solicited and received soldiers from the govern
ment.”45
Page 7 of 32

Following the appointment of Guido Thomaz Marlière (1767–1836) to oversee the settle
ments that formed part of the Rio Doce Military Divisions in 1813, the “civilization of in
digenous people” figured more explicitly in the political plan for Minas Gerais.46 The poli
cy of civilization was limited, however, to forcing indigenous people to live alongside
“Brazilians,” conceived as the sole means of “grounding” indigenous people. Marlière
turned to mestizaje, territorialization, and military occupation for the “pacification” of the
Botocudos. He became famous for insisting—to the scandal of his contemporaries—on
turning those border posts into centers of food provision for the indigenous groups,
where crops, principally corn and manioc, were grown.
Marlière’s vast official correspondence as well as his frequent articles in the Ouro Preto
newspaper O Abelha constitute precious sources on the history of indigenous (p. 420) peo
ple under the impact of the Rio Doce Military Divisions (DMRD). During the time he was
in command, Marlière defended the idea that indigenous people should not be fought
with bullets but with “grains of corn.”47 Between 1824 and 1829 he became director gen
eral of Indians in Minas Gerais, denouncing practices that were common in the process of
sedentarization of indigenous people, such as the indiscriminate use of aguardente (rum).
Faced with the difficulties posed by work in the military divisions, as Marlière’s corre
spondence suggests, he resorted to the compulsory recruitment of soldiers among the
“vagrants” and deported criminals in the towns and outlying areas of Minas Gerais.
In these hybrid places, daily search for the improvement of living conditions brought
about certain interpenetrations of interests, knowledge, and practices among the diverse
social actors; some who found themselves in inhospitable conditions, if the forest environ
ment itself is considered, others forcibly removed from their sociocultural milieu and
placed in a relationship of dependency. Laws and rules needed to be negotiated on a daily
basis, which entailed a practice of mestizaje of sociocultural, political, and economic di
mensions.
Leadership among the Amerindians, for example, is related to other symbolic and social
elements. While settled in the garrisons of the Rio Doce Military Divisions, indigenous
leaders learned to negotiate with the law, receiving the title of “captain” and becoming
“authorities.” Physical punishments such as the trunk—long used in the punishment of
African slaves—were adopted to discipline soldiers and indigenous captains. According to
Marlière’s correspondence, these “captains”—even though they did not wear clothes or
know what money was—received wages, land titles, and other documents in their names.
They proved useful in conquering groups still “isolated” in the forest and some of them
became famous, like Guido Pokrane, the protégé of Guido Marlière, whose name was giv
en to a town that exists today in the Rio Doce Valley. He was even received by the emper
or himself in 1841 to negotiate peace between the enemy Botocudo subgroups on the
north and south banks of the river.
The military divisions functioned as a police force and guardians of indigenous people;
they built chapels, cemeteries and villages, and parceled off allotments. Each garrison
cleared areas of forest and planted crops to attract natives, who suffered from hunger.
Page 8 of 32

The settlements were not, however, conceived as reservations for indigenous people, be
cause the organizing precept was to “absolutely renounce the project of establishing pop
ulations entirely composed of Indians.”48 Such settlements formed part of a process in
which spaces, paths, and rivers were appropriated and controlled under a legal logic and
the definition of boundaries.49 In this sense, they functioned above all as apparatuses of
normalization, focused on disciplining nomadic movement through the institutionalization
of a legal-political norm founded on the classification and administration of indigenous
people by state powers.
In the settlements, Indians suffered constant abuses in their relationships with Brazilians,
who also used intoxication with aguardente to dominate them. “The examples of the sinis
ter effects of this pernicious drug are so great,” Marlière asserted, that “the Indians give
women and children to the ignoble contractors in exchange for it.”50 (p. 421) The traffick
ing of women and children this passage reveals promoted, indirectly, the population of
those backlands with local mestizo workers.
Marlière’s countryman A. Saint-Hilaire, in evaluating the conditions in the Seventh Mili

tary Division of Jequitinhonha administrated by Second Lieutenant Julião Fernandes Leão,
also denounced the perverse effect of the civilizing model the Crown put into practice for
the Botocudos, which had them living alongside “venturous soldiers and public women” in
conditions of utter poverty.51 According to Monsenhor José de Sousa Pizarro (1753–1830),
that region bathed by the river Jequitinhonha—then within the jurisdiction of Porto Se
guro, Bahia—
had been colonized by virtue of “dispositions carried out by Royal Order,” which made
Botocudos lose “their fear of white men,” and with the work of “Menhã Indians settled” in
the garrisons, who forsake “their natural ferocity, [giving] themselves today to cultivating
the land and [carrying out] all kinds of work,” along with “various other individuals and
married couples from their district.”52
One of the indigenous settlements founded by Guido Marlière in 1823 in Barra do Cuieté,
on the right bank of Rio Doce, was made up entirely of young people and children, mainly
girls. According to lieutenant Felipe Cunha do Castro, who inspected several of these vil
lages in 1832 it was more profitable than the others he visited in Jequitinhonha.53
Sergeant José Rodrigues de Medeiros, one of its directors, “preferred to settle children
because he judged them more permeable to civilization.” As for the adults, they remained
“rough and brave,” hunting, fishing, trading with wax “from the land,” wood honey (mel
de pau) and poaia syrup “and not working at all” but fighting among themselves, “it being
impossible to put an end to that custom.”54 Meanwhile, those in the settlement were basi
cally occupied with “navigating rivers, weaving, growing cotton and foodstuffs,” the
adults appeared only “to eat the crops obtained through the work of the children,” which
Cunha do Castro considered an “eloquent testimony of their resisting against organized
labor.”55
Page 9 of 32

The Minas Gerais politician Nelson de Senna (1876–1952) described Rio Doce as “our
Canaan, where the good Lord planted an abundance of incomparable treasures,” naming
the precious stones that could be mined, the vegetable resources, such as sandalwood,
poaia, velame, capaíba, and quinine that could be extracted and commercialized; he
pointed to its fertile lands and high content minerals.56 The exploitation of such riches
mainly required an available workforce. When administrated in government settlements,
Indians could be employed exclusively in the colonists’ enterprises. Throughout the nine
teenth century this became the principal concern for governmental legislation on the is
sue of “catechesis and civilization.”57
The revocation of laws that authorized Just War on the Indians in 1831 was led by sena
tors of the empire for the Province of São Paulo, where it had already been noted that
simply arming troops with gunpowder and shot was not an adequate method for dealing
with indigenous people. In 1829 the Provincial General Council had insisted on the need
for the government to “settle and catechize those Indians, who when pursued by the
bravest and most ferocious ones might seek our protection […] Even if we do not (p. 422)
have a Law on this important subject, it is for the Government to give the necessary in
structions for achieving this end”.58
As historian Fernanda Sposito indicated, during the many debates and public discussions
on the issue, the Provincial Legislative Assemblies, established in 1834, were made re
sponsible with a budget for overseeing the catechesis and civilization of indigenous peo
ple.59 The president of Minas Gerais Antônio da Costa Pinto, proposed in 1837 that the
system of Catholic missions be reinstated to administer the Indians, “following the exam
ple of the Jesuits, who, on the occasion of the discovery of America, made regular associa
tions of the Savage hordes.”60
Decree no. 426 of 24 July 1845, known as the Law of Missions, determined on the admin
istrative system of indigenist policy, which came to focus on the figure of Director Gener
al of Indians. This important decree for the history of indigenist legislation in Brazil con
solidated village directors—already foreseen in the Directorate of Indians of 1757—as
tutelary figures mediating between indigenous people and national society. Its applica
tion, however, supposed an organizational infrastructure on the provincial level that de
manded the direct designation by the emperor of the director general of Indians. As the
process of land valorization continued, official efforts to census the indigenous population
would occupy the administrators’ agenda: discovering and classifying native peoples and
their “types,” precisely mapping their villages and administrating territorial conflicts be
came major governmental concerns.
The Law of Missions of 184561 underwent notable political resistance on the part of those
interested in the wealth and in the Indians the forest concealed. The contradiction be
tween the cabinet—constituted by European-educated lawyers—and the backlands (where
the laws they made seemed valueless) was well observed by John Monteiro as a tendency
across the Brazilian Empire.62 In October 1850, the minister and secretary of state re
sponsible for the “Catechesis and Civilization” program sent all the directors general of
Page 10 of 32

Indians an official letter that included copies of the Law of Landholding, and clarified the
course of action recommended for the future of indigenous lands. This year marked both
the end of black slavery and the Law of Landholding, which deemed “uninhabited” all
lands not owned by individuals or in recognized public use. The presupposition of indige
nous and mestizo racial inferiority is patently clear in the unequal distribution of land,
considering the solid immigration policy set up under the Law of Landholding. From then
on, according to anthropologist Giralda Seyferth, immigrants, who were considered bet
ter suited for colonizing the country, would occupy the lands expropriated from their tra
ditional occupants, with “civilized Indians” remaining on the margins of the colonization
process.63 In the political and academic spheres, the principal discussions about the
nation’s history, or its future, revolved around mestizaje and its effects.
The systematic implementation of the Law of Missions was enforced in Minas Gerais
through a decree issued on January 25, 1872, which projected “five large central settle
ments to concentrate the Indians wandering in the valleys of Rio Doce, Mucuri, Jequitin
honha, Rio Pardo, and Rio Grande.” Only three were established in the basins of the
rivers Manhuaçu, Doce, and Mucuri, and only the last, situated in Itambacuri, remained
in function until the beginning of the twentieth century.
(p. 423) The Colonization of the Mucuri

Various historical records refer to a network of peoples of the Maxakalli linguistic family,
established under the leadership of the legendary “captain” Tomé in the region of the up
per Mucuri from the mid-eighteenth century onward. The populous settlement there had
been established through a “peace” agreement: the indigenous leader possessed a permit
signed by the captaincy governor to occupy the upper Mucuri, albeit within strictly de
fined limits.64 Principally due to their absorption into the garrisons as a workforce for the
fight against enemy Botocudos, who moved into those areas in large numbers over the
course of the nineteenth century, the entire Maxakali-speaking population was drastically
reduced, with the loss of most of its subgroups.
In 1808 chief judge Luiz Thomaz de Navarro made a journey overland on the orders of
the prince regent and described the “pagan nations” in the Jurisdiction of Porto Seguro,
encompassing the basins of the Jequitinhonha and São Mateus rivers. He mentioned the
“Pataxó, most numerous and very aggressive nation,” the Manaxá, Maconi, Macaxó, Man
galo (Maxakali linguistic family), and Botocudo, “which is the most ferocious and daring,
with the Pataxó and Botocudo certainly being cannibals.” The certainty of cannibalism
justified to the Crown the need to continue the war against them, a civilizing method as
sessed as effective in the chief judge’s account. Among these known peoples—the author
goes on—all the “aforementioned nations make their pacts of alliance” with the exception
of the “pagan Pataxó and Botocudo, [who] do not […] want to be associated with any na
tion.” What is most surprising in this account, however, is the information about the “Gov
ernor of the Macaxans”—the famous Tomé mentioned above—who in 1807 was in Vila do
Prado with his by then greatly reduced people. “He came out of the forest […] and sought
Page 11 of 32

peace, and thanks to the priest’s persuasion some seventy pagans came, and on 15 Febru
ary 1807 twenty-six were baptized by the reverend vicar, some already adults, who asked
that they and their children be baptized.”65
Part of the wider region known as Sertões do Leste, the Jequitinhonha and Doce valleys
were ravaged throughout the 1800s by military occupation. Since the Mucuri Valley had
not undergone the “settlement” of indigenous people by military detachments, it re
mained the last frontier for them and other nationals. Like the Maxakali and Botocudo
speakers, the Mucuri received a constant flow of poor laborers and former slaves dis
placed from other areas of the province and even from the northeast, attracted by the val
orization of the land and its reimagining as a place promising riches.66 There are numer
ous accounts of Indians who joined the pioneers on different undertakings, such as the
clearing of forests and the establishment of villages. The resistance to official, military or
religious settlement by the association of a Botocudo group known as the Aranã with a
family of pioneers called Pêgo was well documented.67 The same occurred in other loca
tions, like the region where the Itambacuri mission was established in 1873, where three
brothers from Bahia surnamed Ramos da Cruz lived alongside different Botocudo groups
under the leadership of “captain” Pohóc. These brothers and their mestizo children be
came important interpreters for the later work of missionaries.68
(p. 424) The creation, in 1847, of the Mucuri Navigation and Trading Company—a mixed
capital enterprise directed by the Minas Gerais politician Teófilo Benedito Otoni—had a
significant impact on that regional landscape and its ethnic and cultural meanings.69
Aiming to exert coercive power on that border area, the imperial government ceded vari
ous privileges to business ventures, even if their investment came from the private sector.
Imbued with the liberal projects of its director, the company was founded with the help of
the imperial government under the justification of stimulating regional and national trade
by reducing the transport time for agricultural products from that border zone to the
Court in Rio de Janeiro.
As part of the Company’s project, from 1855 African slaves as well as criollo, Portuguese,
Chinese, German, Dutch, Swiss, and French workers were brought to the Mucuri area to
work in agriculture and open roads. The colonizing Company celebrated “peace accords”
with indigenous groups who “accepted commerce,” as documented by the founder, who—
to emphasize his commitment to republicanism—called the headquarters, in the center of
the forest, “Philadelphia” (today the city of Teófilo Otoni, Minas Gerais) in a clear allusion
to the rights consecrated in the US Declaration of Independence.70
After describing the barbarities committed against indigenous people of the Mucuri re
gion under the command of military divisions, Otoni described his first attempt to estab
lish peace following his arrival in the area, since natives could not be convinced “that
there was […] a new process of catechesis which did not make use of gunpowder and
shot, or aim to steal their children.”71 Despite the politician’s “friendly” attitude, it took
five years after the Mucuri Company began its activities to organize a kind of “parlia
ment” with the Indians, during which they were given gifts of flour and tools.72 When
Page 12 of 32

they finally resolved to “capitulate,” however, Otoni thought it was because they were
afraid of the soldiers he brought in his entourage. As a demonstration of their willingness
to talk, they handed over their children to members of the bandeira.73 Otoni reported that
the establishment of friendly relations with the Giporokas made it possible to survey the
land between Santa Clara and Filadélfia for the construction of the highway. He heralded
the expedition in Mucuri as an opportunity to reestablish human relations far from the
Imperial Court, such that people, products and ideas would circulate in an atmosphere of
greater freedom. The conquest of those backlands echoed the frontier concept that Fred
erick J. Turner developed as the opening of free territories for the construction of the
American national character.74 Thus, historian José Murilo de Carvalho associated the
utopia of Minas Gerais to that of North America—self-government, confederation, and re
public—since the important pro-independence revolt known as the Inconfidência Mineira
or Minas Gerais Conspiracy (1789).75
By way of comparison, one can see how in other pro-independence movements in Spanish
America, the naming of indigenous leaders for the negotiation of peace accords with
“confederated” peoples resulted in multiple processes of ethnogenesis, ethnification, ter
ritorialization, and pacification. According to Otoni’s liberal ideas, indigenous people and
their “countries” would be recognized under the aegis of the new national project. Thus,
the provincial directorate general of Indians, whose director came to be (p. 425) amalga
mated with that of the Mucuri Company, strived to map and name the sub-groups whose
areas of habitation were known in the mid-nineteenth century, besides denouncing the
genocidal practices widely adopted thereto in the backlands.
On the Different Botocudo Groups

The ethnonymy of the Botocudo peoples corresponds to a wide range of diverse sub
groups whose distribution was documented by several officers throughout the 1800s. The
meaning of the native term Borum used for self-denomination is “people,” and it can be
extended to all the indigenous people in the Botocudo network of sociability, independent
ly of their linguistic filiation. Naknenuk was used from the beginning of the military ad
ministration of indigenous people in Rio Doce, probably following a criterion of geograph
ic origin widely employed in Botocudo ethnonymy.76 The movement of Naknenuk peoples
in the capital of the Province of Minas is recorded, including denunciation of the violence
committed against them, in the books of the general directorate of Indians.77
In 1850, the Mucuri Company engineer Roberto Scholbach developed a plan for a main
road from Filadélfia to Urucu, following various studies that took into consideration pre
existing indigenous trails.78 His map situated the quijemes (villages) of various Botocudo
groups living in the area who did not agree to negotiate with the company. One after the
other, these villages were slaughtered following the company’s bankruptcy, and the de
nunciation of these crimes was among the motives for the creation of Central Settle
ments, decreed by Minas Law no. 1921 of 19 July 1872.79
Page 13 of 32

The commissary of the imperial government responsible for declaring the company’s
bankruptcy (1861), José Cândido Gomes, conservative politician and enemy of Otoni,
made detailed notes on the known Botocudo subgroups in the Mucuri, analyzing their in
ternal political relationships, and their hostilities or alliances with public powers. In his
mission to inspect Teófilo Benedito Otoni’s Mucuri Company (1851–1861), he observed
the particularities of Naknenuk’s coexistence with the established colonial population, as
suming the “peaceful nature [of their] villages” prior to the installation of the company.
According to his analysis, the Naknenuks had appeared in the region among the Christian
inhabitants as early as 1836, “fleeing the hostility of the Giporokas and seeking work.”80
Because the Giporokas refused to negotiate with the company, the Naknenuk’s strategy to
“trade” with the colonists was interpreted as representative of a cultural “essence” differ
ent to that of the “true” Botocudos, who could never be “meek.”81 The interpretation
adopted here proposes that relationships of enmity and opposition among the Botocudo
subgroups themselves were part of the cosmopolitics observed throughout their long his
tories of inter-societal rearrangements and articulations.
Before the arrival of the missionaries in Itambacuri, the Brazilian interpreter Félix Ramos
da Cruz who lived with his extended family among the Indians captained by Pohóc—his
father in law—had presented himself to the director of the Third (p. 426) Circumscription
of Indians, Augusto Benedito Otoni, together with Pohóc and his people, showing their
willingness to negotiate. Therefore, in the following decades, they would live the mission
experience planned under the aegis of imperial indigenism. Fruit of his union with Umbe
lina (daughter of chief Pohóc), the future teacher at the Itambacuri mission Domingos
Ramos Pacó wrote an enlightening description of the distribution of Naknenuk groups in
the region, reflecting an organization based on their different alliance strategies (Figure
16.1):
Page 14 of 32

Figure 16.1. These families of Botocudos from the

north of Rio Doce were photographed in 1912 when
they were contacted by the Service of Protection to
the Indians and Location of National Workers
(SPILTN). The surviving remnants of this population
are known today as Krenak indigenous people.
Photograph taken on 5/24/1912. NCS. 7(8) 1363. Ar

quivo Público Da Cidade Da Belo Horizonte.
In the center of Itambacuri lived only Captain Pohóc’s co-villagers, numbering eight hun
dred men. Other tribes that could be related to him lived outside, on the edges of the
Itambacuri waters, serving as sentinels to repel attacks from other enemy tribes. The
Kracatã, Cujãn, Jeruñhim, and Nerinhim tribes, which came from Poté, Trindade, and
Pontarat were relocated in the center. The other tribes were the Hén, Jukjût, Remré, Kr
ermum, Nhãn-Nhãn, Cânmri, Pmácjirum, which came from Cressiúma, Potão, São Ma
teus, and Pézinho.82
Pacó further related that the missionaries entrusted his father to help attract the diverse
Naknenuk subgroups to the central settlement because he was a skillful interpreter,
which entailed the power to convince and mobilize those peoples through an understand
ing of their cosmopolitics based on warrior shamanism.83
It is important to note that landholders never stopped investing in the “entice

(p. 427)
ment” and “seduction” of those “meek” Indians, even with the systematic implementation
of indigenist politics in Mucuri; as a result, the Italian Capuchin missionaries who got es
tablished there in 1873 took the landholders to be enemies of catechesis and attributed
the failure of their projects to the political maneuverings of the elites interested in admin
istrating indigenous people and their lands.
Page 15 of 32

Shamanism and “Revolt”: The Capuchin Mis

sion and Indigenous People
The major problem of catechesis was to administer adequate doses of “civilizing disci
pline” capable of converting “rough, idle and dangerous” Indians into future “moralized
and domestic workers.” For this reason, the directorship of Indians of Minas Gerais un
derstood that “the general powers [should] make efforts to acquire authentic [indige
nous] colonists” because they were “acclimatized” and satisfied “with frugal nourish
ment” and “simple clothing.”84
In 1848, the president of the province of Espírito Santo reported the number of Botocud
os populating the northern portion of the lower Rio Doce as “considerable.” Even so, he
noted their decrease compared to colonial times as they had “retreated to the banks of
Mucuri,” either because in the settlement of Beririca they did not find “the supplies they
hoped to obtain,” or because they were still terrified by the practices of colonists in the
early nineteenth century. The Botocudos who remained in the region, he observed, “were
spread amongst individual houses and farms, where they worked,” and sometimes they
traded with the village inhabitants, exchanging plants and other products they extracted
from the forest for provisions, tools and other items. Also, they sometimes let themselves
be hired as workers.85
These accounts show the value of indigenous labor in that border zone, as they were fre
quently employed in extractive activities that generated large profits for their contrac
tors. The poaia plant, an important drug from the backlands that according to Nelson de
Senna had “good commercial value” up until the twentieth century, was plentiful in the
region.86
In addition to the situation described for the Botocudos in the north of Espírito Santo flee
ing to the Mucuri, during the 1840s there was a “strong resistance by the slaves to the
conditions imposed by captivity” in that same region. The missionary directors of the Nos
sa Senhora dos Anjos do Itambacuri Central Settlement later reported to the authorities
the presence of escaped slaves among the Pojichá.87 Recent research points to frequent
slave-flight from farms, even if the fugitive groups were small, and there is evidence of in
digenous and black people sharing experiences in that border zone.88 This was a field of
study only recently approached by anthropology and history.89 Their cohabitation can be
seen in the photographs of bugrinhas taken in the Itambacuri (p. 428) orphanage in 1910;
that is, pictures of the daughters of Pojichá Indians from the forests of São Mateus,
Province of Espírito Santo, who were enemies of the Naknenuk “confederation,” the last
Botocudo group the missionaries settled in Itambacuri (Figure 16.2).
Page 16 of 32

Figure 16.2. The Colégio Santa Clara in the Itam

bacuri Central Indian Settlement provided a home
for indigenous people and orphans. Taken during the
decade of 1910, the photograph features two of the
founders of Itambacuri, Fr. Seraphim of Gorizia (cen
ter, with a long white beard) and Frei Angelo of Sas
soferrato (second from left to right), shown in the
second row. The detail labeled “As bugrinhas,” or in
digenous girls, suggests features of racial mestizaje.
Arquivo do Colégio Santa Clara, Itambacuri, MG,

Brazil.
Contradictions soon appeared in the structural core of the catechesis service in the
Sertões, where violence and crime persisted in fact and memory. The discourse of catech
esis reveals the impracticability of the conversion of Botocudos, “incorrigible” in their
“superstitious” thinking. The alleged indigenous “love of errant life” and “aversion to
fixed work” led the Itambacuri directors to conclude that civilizing the Botocudos depend
ed on the complete “discovery” of the forest. The entry of “Brazilians” therefore became
strategic, making the “caboclos” and their “mestizo work” responsible for opening new
agricultural areas in the mission’s territory.90
Documents from the provincial directorate general of Indians in this period reveal, how
ever, a constant flow of indigenous leaders to Ouro Preto—capital of the province follow
ing Brazil’s independence—seeking official solutions to the problems they faced. There
they often found the support of leading functionaries such as the brigadier Antônio Luís
de Magalhães Musqueira, head of the provincial directorate general of Indians between
1867 and 1879. Even as they sought official response to their demands, the different in
digenous subgroups inhabiting the backlands would reconstitute themselves through as
sociations with pioneering colonists. The brutal process of land expropriation meant they
had to fight for survival and food security in mixed settlements. “Racial” mixing, which
Page 17 of 32

was even proposed as a public policy of the directorate general of Indians, proved strate
gic for strengthening new symbolic frameworks and means of survival.
The 1893 revolt of two thousand “civilized Indians” in the mission at Itambacuri points to
some of the contradictions involved in the conversion of Botocudos through catechesis. In
letters sent to the director general of Indians, the director of the Third Circumscription of
Indians of the province and acting justice of the peace, colonel Antônio Onofre, showed
himself visibly affected by the “truly horrific scenes” witnessed in the Itambacuri settle
ment, “until very recent times the most prosperous spot in the north of Minas”: rising up
against the missionaries, Indians had committed murders, using the firearms provided by
the priests and firing arrows at people who went to work in the fields. They burned “all
the farm houses and the stores of supplies belonging to the nationals established there;”
they killed every domestic animal they found and destroyed the bridges.
The missionaries took refuge in the convent, not without fighting back. Trying to close the
door, the missionary director was seriously wounded and maintained a long hand-to-hand
combat with the rebellion leaders. The recognition that the friars were saved “through
clear benevolence of Divine Providence,” together with other “miracles attested to by
people altogether conscious of having received them,” increased the fame and charisma
of Itambacuri. Even the “learned superior” of the Capuchin Order, minister general An
dermatt, acknowledged the miracle.91 In retaliation against the revolt, expeditions were
organized to “hunt” the Indians who had escaped into the forest, sometimes “the state po
lice [took part in them] to protect the life and property (p. 429) (p. 430) of threatened indi
viduals,” as later reported by engineer Pedro Versiani who was responsible for processing
denunciations directed to the state secretary for agriculture, commerce and public works
regarding the administration of catechesis.
The ideal of indigenous conversion for the missionary catechesis project emerges in a
wider sense after the indigenous mobilization was dismantled. The few Indians who re
turned to the mission, “persuaded by hunger” were granted “pardon,” but only to the ex
tent of their “repentance”—individual recognition of “guilt” of aspiring to persist in a
“savage” and “sinful” life—because they bore an indelible mark of their “pernicious” na
ture that went against national “order” and “progress.”
The alleged impossibility of civilizing the Botocudos remained a strong racial marker in
the local imaginary, in which remembrance of indigenous people is deliberately sup
pressed from public rites and from the origin narratives of localities and individuals in the
region. It is estimated that the trade in kruks was a major cause of rapid indigenous popu
lation decline, an ethnocide committed by state policies.92 Countless stories circulate
about the descendants of captive Indians who were absorbed by new families of rural
workers in the area, having lost every trace of the links with their ancestors. Together
with the contingents of freed slaves, they came to constitute a large part of the popula
tion of landless mestizo workers.
Page 18 of 32

The last director of Indians in Minas Gerais, during the republican period, recommended
that the “extremely fertile lands” of Itambacuri should accommodate “no less than one
thousand immigrant families, being, however, of justice [to grant] not only the Indians but
also the nationals the land lots they rightfully deserve.” In this same report he praised the
“mixing of races” adopted by the missionaries for its “scientific” as well as economic con
sequences, since “the Indian married to a national is hard-working, economic, well-man
nered and docile, becoming more easily adapted to our customs.”93
The naturalization of indigenous “poverty,” derived from the conception of indigenous in
aptitude for civility, emerged in the course of this process of colonization. It is expressed,
for example, in the hierarchy of employees in official settlements: indigenous teachers
working in the Nossa Senhora dos Anjos do Itambacuri Central Settlement received half
the salary of a non-indigenous teacher from another parish, and even from another settle
ment.94
There is an enormous challenge represented by approaching history from a perspective

that accords native populations “a critical and crucial role.”95 This is illustrated by the es
tablishment of the city of Joaíma, in the Jequitinhonha Valley in present-day Minas Gerais
in order to signpost the enduring idea of mestizaje as a foundation of nationality. The
cacique Joaíma is considered the hero of this city, founded when the Seventh Military Di
vision of Rio Doce was created in 1812. For having “sealed the peace” with the second
lieutenant of this division, Julião Fernandes Leão, against whom the cacique himself
fought, Joaíma is regarded as “the Big Chief” that “must be followed and imitated.” To
seal that peace, he had offered “one of his daughters to the second lieutenant as his
wife.” From then on, “the process of miscegenation continued and the customs of civi
lized people were assimilated by those conquered.”96 The argument developed at this mi
croscopic level of a city’s disciplinary foundational narrative can be extended to (p. 431)
the whole process of civilization across the region in the 1800s, fitting perfectly with the
idea of a peaceful mestizo nationality, yet built on violence against Indians who refused to
be subjugated.
Bibliography
Carvalho, José Murilo de. Cidadania no Brasil: o Longo Caminho. Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Civi
lização Brasileira, 2002.
Castro, Filipe Joaquim Da Cunha. “Expedição ao Rio Doce: Relatório de Viagem de In
speção à 1ª, 5ª, 6ª e 7ª Divisão do Rio Doce, Realizada pelo Comandante Interino do
Quartel Geral das Divisões, Dirigido ao Presidente da Província das Minas Gerais, em
09/11/1832.” Revista do Arquivo Público Mineiro 17, 1913 [1832].
Coelho de Senna, Nelson. Discurso Pronunciado como Orador Official, na Sessão Inaugur
al, da Academia Mineira de Letras, no Theatro de Juiz de Fora, a 13 de maio de 1910. Bel
lo Horizonte, 1910. Accessed April 9, 2015. Http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uiuo.ark:/
13960/t3711bf4d.
Page 19 of 32

Emmerich, Charlotte, and Ruth Montserrat. “Sobre os Aymorés, Kréns e Botocudos. No
tas Linguísticas.” Boletim do Museu do Índio 3 (1975): 5–42.
Espíndola, Haruf S. Sertão do Rio Doce. Bauru: EDUSC, UNIVALE, Instituto Terra, 2005.
Freireyss, George Wilhem. “Viagem a Varias Tribus de Selvagens na Capitania de Minas

Gerais; Permanência entre ellas, Descripção de seus Usos e Costumes.” Revista do Insti
tuto Histórico e Geográfico de São Paulo VI (1901): 236–252.
Monteiro, John M. “Tupis, Tapuias e Historiadores.” Tese de Livre-Docência, Instituto de

Filosofia e Ciências Humanas da Universidade Estadual de Campinas, 2001.
Monteiro, John. “Indigenous Histories in Colonial Brazil: Between Ethnocide and Ethno
genesis.” In The Oxford Handbook of Borderlands of the Iberian World, edited by Danna
A. Levin Rojo and Cynthia Radding, 397–412. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.
Oliveira, João Pacheco. “Uma Etnologia dos Índios Misturados?” Mana 4, no. 1 (1998): 47–
77.
Oliveira, João Pacheco de, ed. A Presença Indígena no Nordeste. Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Con
tra-capa, 2011.
Ottoni, Teóphilo Benedicto. “Notícia sobre os Selvagens do Mucury em uma Carta Dirigi
da pelo Sr. Teófilo Benedito Otoni ao Senhor Dr. Joaquim Manuel de Macedo.” Revista do
Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro XXI (1858): 191–238. Rio de Janeiro: Typ.
Brasiliense de Maximiano Gomes Ribeiro, 1858.
Pacó, Domingos Ramos. “Hámbric Anhamprán ti Mattâ Nhiñchopón? 1918.” In Lem

branças da Terra: Histórias do Mucuri e Jequitinhonha, coordinated by Eduardo Ribeiro,
198–211. Contagem: CEDEFES, 1996 [1918].
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Horizonte: Itatiaia, 1975 [1830].
Notes:
(1.) The author is grateful for the guidance of Prof. John Manuel Monteiro (1956–2013), to
whom this research is dedicated in memoriam.
(2.) Auguste de Saint-Hilaire, Viagem às Nascentes do Rio São Francisco e pela Província
de Goiás, t. 2 (São Paulo: Cia Ed. Nacional, 1937), 378.
(3.) The creation of the Brazilian Geographical and Historical Institute (IHGB) in 1838 is
related to the need of “outlining a profile for the ‘Brazilian nation’, that would guarantee
its distinct identity in the wider group of ‘Nations,’ ” according to the new organizing
principles of social life in the nineteenth century. Meanwhile, the creation of a new na
tional project for a society marked by slave labor and the existence of indigenous popula
tions involved specific difficulties, to which Emperor José Bonifácio referred in 1813: “it
Page 20 of 32

will be very difficult to produce an amalgamation of so many heterogeneous metals such
as white, mulattoes, free blacks and slaves, Indians, etc, etc, etc, in a solid and political
body.” Manoel Luís Salgado Guimarães, “Nação e Civilização nos Trópicos: O Instituto
Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro e o Projeto de uma História Nacional,” Estudos Históri
cos 1, no. 1 (1988): 5–27.
(4.) Rebeca Gontijo, “Na Trilha de Capistrano de Abreu (1853–1927): Índios, História e
Formação do Brasil,” in A Presença Indígena no Nordeste, ed. João Pacheco de Oliveira
(Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Contra-capa, 2011), 608.
(5.) Edgar Roquette-Pinto Rondônia, Archivos do Museu Nacional do Rio de Janeiro, vol.
XX (Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa Nacional, 1917), 31. Accessed 3 October 2015. http://
www.etnolinguistica.org/biblio:roquette-pinto-1917-rondonia
(6.) Various articles in João Pacheco de Oliveira, ed., A Presença Indígena no Nordeste,
explore themes relating to the empirical operations of ideologies involved in the “disap
pearance” of indigenous populations from the northeast during this period.
(7.) Copy of the Order of the Royal Exchequer, of 18 November 1773. Efemérides
Mineiras, IX, pp. 227–228. Arquivo Nacional, Rio de Janeiro (hereafter AN), Fundo
Família Lobo Leite Pereira, AP-5, Cx. 1, Pacote 2.
(8.) Tragic news of the destruction of the Rio Doce following the bursting of dams con
taining mining waste in Mariana, came on November 5, 2015, resulting in a huge spill of
toxic mud that buried towns and their inhabitants, moving down the course of the river
toward the ocean, rendering agricultural areas sterile and killing all forms of life in the
river.
(9.) Rogério Haesbaert and G. Bruce, “A Desterritorialização na Obra de Deleuze e Guat

tari,” Unbral Fronteiras. Accessed April 9, 2015, http://unbral.nuvem.ufrgs.br/base/items/
show/1545.
(10.) The concept of ethnographical area was proposed by ethnologist Júlio César Melatti,
following Eduardo Galvão, “Áreas Culturais Indígenas do Brasil: 1900–1959,” in Encontro
de Sociedades: Ìndios e Brancos no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1979), 193–228.
For the map featuring the ethnographical area “Leste” see Júlio César Melatti, Áreas
Etnográficas da América indígena. Accessed April 9, 2015, http://www.juliomelatti.pro.br/
areas/b2leste.pdf. The concepts of interdigitated identities and geoethnic space go back to
John Murra, “El control vertical de un máximo de pisos ecológicos en la economía de las
sociedades andinas,” in Formaciones económicas y políticas del mundo andino (Lima: IEP,
1975). Chilean anthropologist José Luis Martínez, “Acerca de las etnicidades en la puna
árida en el siglo XVI,” in Etnicidad, economía y simbolismo en los Andes, comp. Silvia
Arze, Rossana Barragán, Laura Escobari, and Ximena Medinaceli (La Paz: HISBOL, IFEA,
SBH, ASUR, 1992), 35–65, used the concept of “interdigitated identities” to show how the
determination of separate political and ethnic units is not applicable to certain ecological
spaces.
Page 21 of 32

(11.) Taking into account the Lévi-Straussian doctrine on alliance, anthropologist Eduar
do Viveiros de Castro, “ ‘Transformação’ na Antropologia, Transformação da ‘Antropolo
gia,’ ” Mana 18, no. 1 (2012): 156, suggests that bonds of affinity operate as “the generic
schema of indigenous social relationships.” According to him, the so-called theory of po
tential affinity characterizes “an indigenous sociology in which difference rather than
similarity is the fundamental relational schema”; Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, A Incon
stância da Alma Selvagem e Outros Ensaios de Antropologia (São Paulo: Cosac & Naify,
2002), 336.
(12.) The term “cosmopolitics” used in contemporary ethnology emphasizes the existence
of different notions of cosmos and different politics. According to anthropologist Bruno
Latour, “From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik or How to Make Things Public,” in Making Things
Public. Atmospheres of Democracy, ed. Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel (Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 2005), 347, it goes back to the ancient Stoics to express “the relationship to
humanity in general and not to a city in particular.” Isabelle Stengers expanded upon the
idea proposing “a new politics, no longer conforming to the modernist accord between
nature and society.” In the Amerindian case, cosmopolitics is related to animism, in the
sense that all beings, both animals and humans, are considered to have subjectivity and
intentionality. Their different perspectives are based on predation, extending to relation
ships between all beings in the universe, human and non-human, natural or supernatural.
Revenge characterizes relationships with the Other and serves to explain processes such
as sickening, where the subject’s “soul” can be “cannibalized” by the “soul” of the animal
ingested, for example, which takes revenge for having been eaten. On this cosmopolitical
level one can also include wars, which aim to bring the “outside” to the inner world, (re
lated) powers that contribute to the construction of a sense of “consanguine” identity,
through incorporation of the Other.
(13.) Amy Turner Bushnell, “Patterns of Food Security in the Prehispanic Americas,” in
The Oxford Handbook of Borderlands of the Iberian World, ed. Danna A. Levin Rojo and
Cynthia Radding, 31–55 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019).
(14.) Thus named by the Portuguese due to their characteristic labial decoration, the
imató, a light wooden disc compared to the cork or bung used in bottles of cachaça:
“botoque.” This group’s self-designation, but extensible to all Amerindians, in the native
language, is Borum, meaning “people.” Although these peoples have become famous in
history and ethnology under the ethnonym Botocudo, they were only referred to by this
term in literature, because in practice the epithet “bugres” was usually adopted by the
backlands population. In the account of his journey along the Rio Doce, Paul Ehrencheich,
Índios Botocudos do Espírito Santo no século XIX (Vitoria: Ed. IHGES, 2004 [1887]), 47–
48, clarifies that while the name Botocudo “seems to come from the reference to the
wooden discs the indigenous people use as decoration, similar to the bungs used in Por
tuguese barrels (botoques), the name bugre must refer to the word bougre, which means
heretic.”
Page 22 of 32

(15.) Czech linguist Chestmir Loukotka, “Línguas Indígenas do Brasil,” Revista do Arqui
vo Municipal de São Paulo 54, V (1939): 147–174, proposed a synthesis of the occurrence
of ethnonyms and their linguistic meanings.
(16.) Maximiliano de Wied-Neuwied, Viagem ao Brasil (São Paulo: Companhia Ed. Na
cional, 1958 [1823]); Johan Jakob von Tschudi, Reisen durch Sudämerika, vol. 2
(Stuttgart: Brockhaus, 1971 [1866]).
(17.) Auguste de Saint-Hilaire, Segunda Viagem ao Interior do Brasil: Espírito Santo (São
Paulo: Cia Ed. Nacional, 1936 [1818]), 86.
(18.) One of many documentary examples refers to the alliance of various peoples with
members of the Pêgo family. Antonio Negreiros Pêgo—a son of Manoel Luiz, founder of
the city of Capelinha, Minas Gerais—served as a soldier in the Rio Doce Seventh Military
Division and, for his ability to forge and maintain alliances with indigenous people, he
was promoted several times. His brother Feliciano Pêgo, a landowner, along with other
relatives, came to “domesticate” indigenous people in the private sphere for decades, and
also fought rebels in combat. In 1832, he was paid to fight Botocudo hostilities and at
tacked a village with fifty men (including allied Indians) killing at least forty warriors.
João Pêgo Moço, a third-generation member of this pioneers family, was accused by the
Municipal Council of Minas Novas of kidnapping indigenous children. Felipe Joaquim da
Cunha e Castro, “Expedição ao Rio Doce: Relatório de Viagem de Inspeção à 1ª, 5ª, 6ª e
7ª Divisão do Rio Doce, Realizada pelo Comandante Interino do Quartel Geral das Di
visões, Dirigido ao Presidente da Província das Minas Gerais, em 09/11/1832,” Revista do
Arquivo Público Mineiro 17 (1913), 86–87.
(19.) These were quilombos, communities present in the history of Minas Gerais and oth
er areas of Brazil since colonial times. As anthropologist Eliane Cantarino O’Dwyer points
out, “the term quilombo was used almost exclusively by historians,” but its meaning was
updated, being inscribed in article 68 of the Act of Transitory Constitutional Dispositions,
in the Brazilian Constitution of 1988, “to give territorial rights to the remnants of quilom
bos still occupying their lands.” Published in her book Quilombos: Identidade Étnica e
Territorialidade (Rio de Janeiro: Editora FGV, 2002).
(20.) Charlotte Emmerich and Ruth Montserrat, “Sobre os Aymorés, Kréns e Botocudos.
Notas Linguísticas,” Boletim do Museu do Índio 3 (1975): 5–42. Some dictionaries of the
Botocudo language, including the Naknenuk, were made by Pedro Victor Renault, “Vocab
ulários da Língua dos Botocudos, Nac-Nanucs e Giporocas, Habitantes das Margens do
Rio Mucury e Todos os Santos, Tambem Identico ao dos Kraik-mús Habitantes das Mar
gens do Gequitinhonha [1836],” Revista do Arquivo Público Mineiro 8 (1903): 1095–1117.
(21.) Georges Balandier, “La situation coloniale: approche théorique,” Cahiers Interna
tionaux de Sociologie XI (1951): 44–79. From this perspective, Brazilian anthropologist
Roberto Cardoso de Oliveira, “A Noção de Colonialismo Interno na Etnologia,” in Sociolo
gia do Brasil Indígena (Rio, Brasilia: Civilização Brasileira, Tempo Brasileiro, 1978) intro
duced into Brazilian ethnography the study of the problematic history of contact, which
Page 23 of 32

has produced reflections pertinent to the “anthropology of colonialism,” above all in is
sues of internal colonization. See also João Pacheco de Oliveira, “Uma Etnologia dos Ín
dios Misturados?,” Mana 4, no. 1 (1998): 47–77.
(22.) Hal Lawrence Langfur, “Uncertain Refuge: Frontier Formation and the Origins of
the Botocudo War in the Late Colonial Brasil,” Hispanic American Historical Review 82,
no. 2 (2002): 215–256; Haruf Salem Espíndola, Sertão do Rio Doce (Bauru: EDUSC, UNI
VALE, Instituto Terra, 2005).
(23.) The political cohesion necessary for the government of the Portuguese Empire and
the formal rules for the conduct of colonial institutions under royal power were analyzed
by António Manuel Hespanha, “Por que é que foi ‘portuguesa’ a expansão portuguesa? Ou
O revisionismo nos trópicos,” in O Governo dos Povos, ed. Laura de Mello e Souza, Júnia
Ferreira Furtado, and Maria Fernanda Bicalho (São Paulo: Alameda, 2009). For Hespanha
“[there was] nothing of an absolutist conception of power, but rather the habitual and
pervasive figure of the pact between the king and the communities, a pact whose princi
pal consequence was a mutual limitation of the power of the king and his subjects.” In his
view, such pacts—which resulted in the Decrees of Offensive War against the Botocudos
in Minas Gerais and São Paulo—served to reinforce the prolongation of royal power,
through the feeling of belonging to the kingdom (p. 50).
(24.) António Manuel Hespanha, Imbecillitas. As Bem-aventuranças da Inferioridade nas

Sociedades de Antigo Regime (São Paulo: Annablume, 2010), 229.
(25.) Leis Históricas: Carta Régia—de 13 de maio de 1808. Accessed April 9, 2015, http://
www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/revista/Rev_18/CartaRegia_1305.htm.
(26.) João Adolfo Hansen, “A Servidão Natural do Selvagem e a Guerra Justa Contra o
Bárbaro,” in A Descoberta do Homem e do Mundo, ed. Adauto Novaes (São Paulo: Com
panhia da Letras, 1998), 355.
(27.) António Manuel Hespanha, As Vésperas do Leviatã. A Sociedade do Antigo Regime

(Séc. XVIII) (Coimbra: Almedina, 2002), 222.
(28.) Accessed September 14, 2015, http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/revista/Rev_19/

CartaRegia_0511.htm.
(29.) Rosângela Ferreira Leite, “A Política Joanina para a Ocupação dos Sertões (Guara
puava, 1808–1821),” Revista de História 159 (2008): 167–187.
(30.) Manuela Carneiro da Cunha, “Política Indigenista no Século XIX,” in História dos Ín
dios no Brasil, ed. Manuela Carneiro da Cunha (São Paulo: Cia das Letras, 2006), 142.
(31.) Andrés Reséndez, “Borderlands of Bondage,” in The Oxford Handbook of Border

lands of the Iberian World, ed. Danna A. Levin Rojo and Cynthia Radding, 571–189 (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2019).
Page 24 of 32

(32.) Indigenous children who were victims of the war were highly sought-after by traf
fickers, farmers and foreign traveling naturalists. Everyone coming in the area in the first
half of the 1800s negotiated to take along a kruk, mainly with second lieutenant Julião
Fernandes Leão in the Seventh Military Division of São Miguel, in Jequitinhonha. One boy,
Quäck, was acquired by Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied and sent to Germany where
he died aged twenty-seven, having been an important aide to Wied in linguistic research
and the identification of species taken from the region. Saint-Hilaire also negotiated a boy
to take to Europe, after various journeys described in his Viagens Pelas Províncias do Rio
de Janeiro e Minas Gerais (Belo Horizonte: Itatiaia, 1975 [1830]), 276. The kruk obtained
by the Austrian Johann Emanuel Pohl managed to escape. See Pohl’s Viagem no Interior
do Brasil (São Paulo: EDUSP, 1976 [1817–1821]), 141–142.
(33.) Sérgio da Mata, “Chão de Deus: Catolicismo Popular, Espaço e Proto-urbanização

em Minas Gerais. Séculos XVIII–XIX” (PhD diss., University of Köln, 2002); Hilda Pívaro
Stadnik, “Fronteira e Mito: Turner e o Agrarismo Norte-americano,” CyTA - Geografía
Económica 7- Gecon Suplemento (2007). Accessed April 4, 2014, http://www.cyta.com.ar/
suplementos/gecon/articulos/articulos_archivos/geo_v6_n2_a4.pdf.
(34.) Ivan de Andrade Velasco, As Seduções da Ordem: Violência,Criminalidade e Admin

istração da Justiça, Minas Gerais, Século XIX (Bauru: EDUSC, 2004), 184.
(35.) The full text of the Directive of Indians can be viewed at http://
www.nacaomestica.org/diretorio_dos_indios.htm. Accessed April 9, 2015.
(36.) Laura de Mello e Souza, Norma e Conflito: A Aspectos da História de Minas no Sécu
lo XVIII (Belo Horizonte: UFMG, 1999), 92.
(37.) For the Uruguayan case, see María Inés de Torres Carballal, “Construir la nación
desde la(s) periferia(s): sujetos letrados y sujetos criollos en el Uruguay del siglo
XIX” (PhD diss., Michigan State University, 1986). For the Argentinian case, see Andrea
Roca, Os Sertões e o Deserto. Imagens da Nacionalização dos Índios no Brasil e na Ar
gentina, na Obra de J. M. Rugendas (1802–1858), vol. 1 (Rio de Janeiro: Garamond, 2014).
(38.) Márcia Regina C. Naxara, “Estrangeiros em sua Própria Terra: Representações do

Trabalhador Nacional (1870–1920)” (PhD diss., Universidade Estadual de Campinas,
1991).
(39.) The term “catechesis,” known for its association with the conversion of indigenous
people carried out by Catholic missionaries, was widely used in the Imperial period
(1822–1889) to refer to a branch of public service dedicated to the indigenous “problem.”
The “catechesis and civilization” of indigenous people—common subject in political delib
eration on the provincial and national levels—was conceived, throughout the nineteenth
century, as a governmental action to promote colonization, the use of Indian labor and,
principally, the occupation of land. Patrícia Melo Sampaio, “Política Indigenista no Brasil
Imperial,” in O Brasil Imperial (1808–1889), vol. 1, ed. Keila Grinberg and Ricardo Salles
(Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2009), 175–206.
Page 25 of 32

(40.) The distinction between the categories emic and etic is often used in anthropology to
differentiate concepts inherent to the groups or societies studied from those used by an
thropologists in their analyses; The directorate general of Indians in Minas Gerais, estab
lished by the Royal Letters of 1808 as part of a policy of continuity with the Pombaline
Era measures relating to the civilization of Indians, was aimed at protecting indigenous
people, as well as the state’s interests in occupying and populating more land. This struc
ture of the Service of Catechesis and Civilization remained in Minas Gerais throughout
the nineteenth century and was implanted in other provinces after the Law of Catechesis
of 1845. See Izabel Missagia de Mattos, Civilização e Revolta: os Botocudos e a Cate
quese na Província de Minas (Bauru: EDUSC, ANPOCS, 2004); For more on the concept of
ethnogenesis, see John Monteiro, “Indigenous Histories in Colonial Brazil: Between Eth
nocide and Ethnogenesis,” in The Oxford Handbook of Borderlands of the Iberian World,
ed. Danna A. Levin Rojo and Cynthia Radding, 397–412 (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2019).
(41.) Serge Gruzinski, O Pensamento Mestiço (São Paulo: Cia. das Letras, 2001).
(42.) Guillaume Boccara, “Antropología política en los márgenes del Nuevo Mundo: cate
gorías coloniales, tipologías antropológicas y producción de la diferencia,” in Fronteras
movedizas. Clasificaciones coloniales y dinámicas socioculturales en las fronteras ameri
canas, ed. Christophe Giudicelli (Mexico: El Colegio de Michoacán, CEMCA, Embajada de
Francia en México, 2010), 120.
(43.) In 1992 John Monteiro and Manuela Carneiro da Cunha organized an exhaustive
survey of sources for the history of indigenous peoples in the Public Archives of Brazil, for
which Izabel Missagia contributed the entries for Minas Gerais. John M. Monteiro, Guia
de Fontes sobre História Indígena em Arquivos Públicos Brasileiros, Acervos das Capitais
(São Paulo: NHII-USP, FAPESP, 1994).
(44.) By the 1870s a generation of intellectuals such as Sílvio Romero, Euclides da Cunha,
Alberto Torres, Nina Rodrigues, Manoel Bomfim, Machado de Assis, Tobias Barreto,
Aluízio Azevedo, and Graça Aranha, among others, stood out for scrutinizing national cul
ture with an “eminently critical perspective” on the Romanticism that had thus far pre
vailed, according to literary critic Antônio Cândido, Introducão ao Método Crítico em
Sílvio Romero (São Paulo: Ed. USP, 1988), 39–40. On eugenics, Thomas Skidmore, Preto
no Branco: Raça e Nacionalidade no Pensamento Brasileiro (Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra,
1976), 70, believes that the ideal of whitening came into existence around 1870, through
the influence of European racial theories. According to Celia Maria Marinho de Azevedo,
Onda Negra, Medo Branco: o Negro no Imaginário das Elites—Século XIX (Rio de Janeiro:
Paz e Terra, 1987), 61–62, the idea of racial inferiority “seen thus far in terms of ‘pagan
ism’ and cultural ‘barbarism,’ began to be overlaid with sophisticated racial theories,
branded with the prestigious seal of the sciences.” See also Nancy Stepan, “Identidades
Nacionais e Transformações Raciais,” in A Hora da Eugenia: Raça, Gênero e Nação na
América Latina (Rio de Janeiro: Fiocruz, 2005).
Page 26 of 32

(45.) George Wilhem Freireyss, “Viagem a Varias Tribus de Selvagens na Capitania de Mi
nas Gerais; Permanência entre ellas, Descripção de seus Usos e Costumes,” Revista do In
stituto Histórico e Geográfico de São Paulo VI (1901): 237.
(46.) Guido Thomaz Marlière was a French soldier who deserted the army of Napoleon
Bonaparte and enlisted in Portugal. In 1808 he traveled with the royal family to Brazil,
being sent to Minas Gerais in 1810, as a lieutenant attached to the Linha Cavalry Regi
ment. In 1818 he took command of the Rio Doce military divisions.
(47.) Darcy Ribeiro, Os Índios e a Civilização: a Integração das Populações Indígenas no

Brasil Moderno (Petropolis: Editora Vozes, 1977), 95.
(48.) “Carta de Marlière ao Coronel João José Lopes, deputado à Assembleia, de 11 de jul
ho de 1825,” Revista do Arquivo Público Mineiro 11 (1906): 609.
(49.) Espíndola, Sertão do Rio Doce.
(50.) “Continuação dos Documentos e Correspondência Oficial de Guido Thomaz Mar

liere,” Revista do Arquivo Público Mineiro 11 (1906): 81.
(51.) Saint-Hilaire, Viagens pelas Províncias, 276–277.
(52.) José de Sousa Azevedo Pizarro Araujo, Memórias Históricas do Rio de Janeiro e das
Províncias Anexas à Jurisdição do Vice-Rei do Estado do Brasil, Dedicadas a El-Rei Nosso
Senhor D. João VI (Rio de Janeiro: Impressão Regia, 1820), 47.
(53.) Filipe Joaquim da Cunha e Castro, “Expedição ao Rio Doce: relatório,” Revista do Ar
quivo Público Mineiro 17 (1913): 86–87.
(54.) Made from the roots of Cephäelis ipecacuanha. “At certain times of year,” writes
botanist George Wilhelm Freireyss, “[the Portuguese who do profitable business trading
this drug] gather the largest possible number of Indians and cross the forest with them.
On these excursions they always take provisions and especially aguardente, which they
sell at a profit—although trading it to Indians is prohibited—exchanging one small cup for
every one-fourth of a pound of valuable ipecacuanha root collected by the Indians.”
Freireyss, “Viagem a Varias Tribus de Selvagens,” 245.
(55.) Freireyss, “Viagem a Varias Tribus de Selvagens,” 245.
(56.) Nelson Coelho de Senna, Discurso Pronunciado como Orador Official, na Sessão
Inaugural, da Academia Mineira de Letras, no Theatro de Juiz de Fora, a 13 de maio de
1910 (Belo Horizonte: IOMP, 1910). Accessed April 9, 2015, http://hdl.handle.net/2027/
uiuo.ark:/13960/t3711bf4d.
(57.) In an 1823 official letter to the emperor, Marlière described the situation in the pre
sidio of Manoel Burgo, where besides the house where the director of Indians lived with
his family, there was a church with its ensign and a tiled mill: “The Portuguese poaia
traders use labor from most huts by force, they eat corn from the cleared land that pro
Page 27 of 32

duced well, and run with the Puris, who flee into the woods whenever their Director
clears another tract of land and comes back to them with abundant provisions that the
presidio supplies for the poaia business, the trading of which everyone knows I do not
practice.” “Oficio Enviado ao Imperador por Guido Thomaz Marlière,” Revista do Arquivo
Público Mineiro 10 (1823): 443.
(58.) “Atas do Conselho da Presidência da Província de São Paulo, anos 1829–1832,” Bole
tim 15, Nova Fase (São Paulo: Departamento do Arquivo do Estado de São Paulo, Secre
taria da Educação, 1961), 19–20.
(59.) Fernanda Sposito. “Liberdade para os índios no Império do Brasil. A revogação das
guerras justas em 1831,” Almanak 1, no. 1 (2011): 63.
(60.) Relatório do Presidente da Província, Antônio da Costa Pinto, à Assembléia Provin

cial, relativo ao ano de 1837, XXII–XXIII. AN. Fundo: Exposições, Falas, Mensagens e Re
latórios Provinciais-Estaduais. Minas Gerais.
(61.) Full text of Decree 426 of 1845 (Law of Missions). Accessed April 9, 2015, http://
www2.camara.leg.br/legin/fed/decret/1824–1899/decreto-426-24-julho-1845-560529-pub
licacaooriginal-83578-pe.html.
(62.) John M. Monteiro, “Tupis, Tapuias e Historiadores” (Tese de Livre-Docência, Institu

to de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas da Universidade Estadual de Campinas, 2001), 129–
168.
(63.) Giralda Seyferth, “La inmigración alemana y la política brasileña de colonización,”

Estudios Migratorios Latinoamericanos 10, no. 29 (1995): 60.
(64.) Relação fornecida pelo capitão-mor João da Silva Santos a respeito da aldeia do
Capitão Tomé. Inventário dos Documentos Relativos ao Brasil. Arquivo de Marinha e Ul
tramar de Lisboa. Bahia, t. V, pp. 230–272, nn. 27108–27111 and 27113–27114, vol.
XXXVII dos Anais da Biblioteca Nacional.
(65.) Luiz Thomaz de Navarro, “Apontamentos, da Bahia ao Rio de Janeiro, por ordem do
príncipe regente, em 1808, o desembargador Luiz Thomaz de Navarro” (Manuscrito in
édito, oferecido ao Instituto pelo sócio correspondente o Ser. F. A. de Varnhagen), Revista
Trimensal de História e Geografia. Jornal Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasilerio VII
(186): 443.
(66.) Hal Lawrence Langfur. “The Forbidden Lands: Frontier Settlers, Slaves, and Indians
in Minas Gerais, Brazil, 1760–1830” (PhD diss., University of Texas-Austin, 1999).
(67.) See note 15, and Izabel Missagia de Mattos, “A presença dos Aranã nos Registros
Históricos. Goiânia,” Habitus 3, 1 (2005): 41–79.
(68.) Domingos Ramos Pacó, son of the Brazilian interpreter Félix Ramos da Cruz and
Umbelina Pohóc, daughter of the famous indigenous “captain” Pohóc, is the author of an
incomparable document in indigenous history. It is a memoir of the Missionary Settle
Page 28 of 32

ment written against the grain of history as told by the missionaries with sections in the
language spoken in Itambacuri (Botocudo or Borún). A testimony of a grandson of Domin
gos Pacó I colleted in 2014 in the city of Itambacuri, told in vivid detail how the family of
pioneers came to be accepted by the indigenous population, after being kept prisoners for
several days. See the transcription of Ramos Pacó’s manuscript “Hámbric Anhamprán ti
Mattâ Nhiñchopón? 1918,” in Lembranças da Terra: Histórias do Mucuri e Jequitinhonha,
ed. Eduardo Ribeiro, 198–211 (Contagem: CEDEFES, 1996), 201.
(69.) Born in Serro, Minas Gerais (1807), deceased in Rio de Janeiro (1869). Son of a trad
er, Otoni attended the Naval Academy in Rio de Janeiro, having been elected representa
tive for the Province of Minas in 1835 and general representative in the fourth, fifth and
seventh legislature. In 1842 he was arrested and accused as one of the leaders of the Lib
eral Revolt.
(70.) The existence of such “peace accords” was rarely reported in Imperial Brazil, having
been a common practice in the colonization of Spanish America. The study of the expan
sion of the Iberian empires on the internal frontiers of America in the second half of the
eighteenth century reveals certain aspects of the relationships between colonial adminis
trations and indigenist politics. Guillaume Boccara, “Poder Colonial e Etnicidade no Chile:
Territorialização e Reestruturação entre os Mapuche da Época Colonial,” Tempo 12, no.
23 (2007), 56–72, demonstrated the importance of such negotiations and trade with colo
nial agents, as a disciplinary instrument that contributed to this people being constituted
as a recognized ethnic group. Among the impacts of the expansion of states on indige
nous populations the concentration of political power—specifically coercive power—on
native chieftaincies has been emphasized. The ritualism of peace accords involving mili
tary uniforms, names of governors and other attendants afforded instruments for coopt
ing indigenous authorities. Ingrid de Jong, “Políticas indígenas y estatales en Pampa y
Patagonia (1850–1880),” Habitus 5, no. 2 (2007): 301–331 made an in-depth analysis of
this phenomenon of reconfiguration of frontiers and ethnic identities for eighteenth-cen
tury Argentina.
(71.) Teófilo Benedito Otoni, “Notícia sobre os Selvagens do Mucury em uma Carta Dirigi
da pelo Sr. Teófilo Benedito Otoni ao Senhor Dr. Joaquim Manuel de Macedo,” Revista do
Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro XXI (1858): 200.
(72.) Otoni, “Notícia sobre os selvagens,” 14.
(73.) According to the Michaelis Portuguese-English dictionary, the term “bandeira”

refers to an “expedition (to the hinterland in conquest of new land, gold and precious
stones).” Accessed January 4, 2015, http://michaelis.uol.com.br/moderno/ingles/
index.php?lingua=portugues-ingles&palavra=bandeira.
(74.) Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American History (New York: Dover Publi
cations, 1996 [1920]).
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(75.) José Murilo de Carvalho, Cidadania no Brasil: o Longo Caminho (Rio de Janeiro: Ed.
Civilização Brasileira, 2002); “Two [of the political revolts that occurred in the 18th cen
tury] came to be symptomatic in the region of Minas, where conditions were favorable for
rebellion. The most politicized was the Inconfidência Mineira (1789), which was inspired
by the enlightenment thinking of the eighteenth century and the example of the indepen
dence of North American colonies.” Carvalho, Cidadania no Brasil: o Longo Caminho, 24.
(76.) Luiz Pedreira do Couto Ferraz. “Apontamentos sobre a Vida do Índio Guido Pokrane
e sobre o Francez Guido Marlière, Offerecido ao Instituto Historico e Geographico do
Brasil, pelo Socio Exmo. Snr. Conselheiro Luiz Pedreira do Couto Ferraz,” Revista do In
stituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro XVIII (1855): 413.
(77.) Izabel Missagia de Mattos, “Catequese, Miscigenação e Nacionalidade: o Indigenis

mo em Minas na Transição para a República,” Tellus 3, no. 5 (2003), 55–72.
(78.) Roberto Scholbach, Relatório e Esboço da Picada para o Urucu. Arquivo Público
Mineiro (hereafter APM). Fundo: Presidência da Província, Série: correspondência recebi
da, Sub-série: obras públicas. Cx. 76. Doc. 6.
(79.) Law no. 1921 of July 19, 1872. Assembleia Legislativa de Minas Gerais. Accessed
October 13, 2015, http://www.almg.gov.br/consulte/legislacao/completa/completa.html?
tipo=LEI&num=1921&comp=&ano=1872.
(80.) Frei Olavo Timmers, OFM, O Mucuri e o Nordeste Mineiro no Passado e seu Desen
volvimento Segundo Documentos e Notícias Recolhidas por Frei Olavo Timmers OFM em
Lembrança do 100o Aniversário de Teófilo Benedito Ottoni. 1869–17 de Outubro de 1969.
Teófilo Otoni. Datilografado com emendas manuscritas. APM, 535 fls., 36v.
(81.) The interpretation that the “true identity” of the Naknenuk would be Maxakali was
proposed by anthropologist Maria Hilda Paraíso in “O tempo da dor e do trabalho: a con
quista dos territórios indígenas nos sertões do leste” (PhD diss., USP, 1998). In the docu
mentation analyzed, however, many Botocudo language terms appear in the Naknenuk
onomasticon, such as the names attributed to some of their captains, according to the
correspondence of G. Marlière. Using this wide documentation, the Botocudo language
was also studied by Emmerich and Montserrat, “Sobre os Aymorés, Kréns e Botocudos,”
5–42.
(82.) Pacó, “Hámbric Anhamprán ti Mattâ Nhiñchopón? 1918.”
(83.) Izabel Missagia de Mattos, “Considerações sobre Política e Parentesco entre os

Botocudos (Borún) do Século XIX: Uma Interpretação da Articulação de uma Rede Social
e Simbólica,” R@U Revista de Antropologia da UFSCar 5, no. 1 (2013): 82–96.
(84.) Report from director general of Indians José Januário de Cerqueira. 17 February
1886. Annexed to the report of the president of the Province to the Provincial Assembly.
APM.
Page 30 of 32

(85.) Hermillo Candido da Costa Alves, Estrada de Ferro da Victoria para Minas. Relatorio
Apresentado ao Ministro da Agricultura, etc., Conselheiro Thomaz José Coelho de Almei
da (Rio de Janeiro: Typ. Nacional, 1876).
(86.) Coelho de Senna, Discurso Pronunciado como Orador Official, na Sessão Inaugural,
da Academia Mineira de Letras.
(87.) Ana Lúcia Côgo, “História Agrária do Espírito Santo no Século XIX. A Região de São
Mateus” (PhD diss., USP, 2012), 111; Official letter from the directors of the Itambacuri
settlement to the minister and secretary of state for business, agriculture and public
works in Rio de Janeiro, March 1885. Arquivo Geral da Ordem, Colegio San Lorenzo da
Brindisi, Roma, Italia.
(88.) Márcio Santos Achtschin, “Mucuri: Sociabilidades e Cotidiano Escravo no Século

XIX” (Dissertação de Mestrado, Universidade Severino Sombra, 2006).
(89.) Maria Rosário de Carvalho, Edwin Reesink, and Julie A. Cavignac, Negros no Mundo
dos Índios: Imagens, Reflexos, Alteridades (Natal: EDUFRN, 2011).
(90.) For a detailed analysis of this revolt, see Izabel Missagia de Mattos, “Botocudos en
tre a Catequese e a Revolta,” Revista do Arquivo Público Mineiro 51, no. 2 (2015): 24–47.
(91.) Frei Ângelo de Sassoferrato, ofm Cap., Synopse da Missão cathechética dos selvico
las do Mucury, norte do Estado de Minas Geraes (1915), 11. Arquivo dos Capuchinhos do
Rio de Janeiro, Gav. c, pasta IV, 1915. This mission was founded in 1873, by the Capuchin
friars Seraphim de Gorizia and Ângelo de Sassoferrato amid the forest, 36 kilometers to
the south of the city of Theophilo Ottoni (previously named Philadelphia).
(92.) For an analysis of the concept of ethnocide, see Monteiro, “Indigenous Histories in
Colonial Brazil.”
(93.) Brigadeiro Antônio Alves Pereira da Silva, Report to the Secretary of Agriculture,
Commerce and Public Works, David Campista. 4 November 1893. APM. SG 25, rolo 04,
86
(94.) Table of Distribuição do Crédito de 15:000$000 destinados à Catequese que vigora

desde 1889. SG 25, p. 71v. APM. In the 1892 annual report presented to the Provincial
Presidency, the director general of Indians, Antônio Alves Pereira da Silva, finally recog
nized after the indigenous school had been functioning for almost 20 years, “that it is ab
solutely fair to make their salaries equal to those earned by parish teachers.” APM. SG
25, 71v.
(95.) Monteiro, “Tupis, Tapuias e Historiadores,” 78.
(96.) See Homepage of the city of Joaíma, Minas Geraisa. Accessed April 9, 2015, http://
imagensjoaima.blogspot.com.br.
Page 31 of 32

Izabel Missagia de Mattos
Izabel Missagia de Mattos, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Universidade

Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro, teaches graduate and postgraduate courses in the
fields of History and Social Sciences. She has authored a book titled Civilização e Re
volta: Os Botocudos e a Catequese na Província de Minas (2004). This work, awarded
by the National Association of Post-graduation and Research in Social Sciences (AN
POCS, 2003), is the fruit of her doctoral research at the Universidade Estadual de
Campinas, Brazil. She is presently investigating, with a grant from the Rio de Janeiro
Foundation for Research Support (Fundação de Apoio à Pesquisa do Rio de Janeiro),
processes related to social memory, cultural heritage and landscapes of the indige
nous peoples of Minas Gerais.
Page 32 of 32

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Colonization, Mediation, and Mestizaje in the Borderlands of Nineteenth-

Century Minas Gerais, Brazil

Colonization, Mediation, and Mestizaje in the Border­

Print Publication Date: Dec 2019 Subject: History, European History

Abstract and Keywords

Keywords: Keywordscatechesis, backlands/Sertões, Botocudos, mestizaje, revolts, ethnogenesis, national narra­

Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 23 January 2020

Nineteenth-century Brazil can be characterized by extreme political heterogeneity, serv­

Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 23 January 2020

Different denominations such as Kamakã, Pataxó, Malali, Macuni, Monoxó, Cumanoxó,

Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 23 January 2020

Arms and Arguments of Civilization

Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 23 January 2020

Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 23 January 2020

Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 23 January 2020

Garrisons, Barracks, and Indigenist Legislation

Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 23 January 2020

Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 23 January 2020

Marlière’s countryman A. Saint-Hilaire, in evaluating the conditions in the Seventh Mili­

Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 23 January 2020

Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 23 January 2020

(p. 423) The Colonization of the Mucuri

Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 23 January 2020

Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 23 January 2020

On the Different Botocudo Groups

Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 23 January 2020

Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 23 January 2020

Figure 16.1. These families of Botocudos from the

Photograph taken on 5/24/1912. NCS. 7(8) 1363. Ar­

It is important to note that landholders never stopped investing in the “entice­

Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 23 January 2020

Shamanism and “Revolt”: The Capuchin Mis­

Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 23 January 2020

Figure 16.2. The Colégio Santa Clara in the Itam­

Arquivo do Colégio Santa Clara, Itambacuri, MG,

Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 23 January 2020

Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 23 January 2020

There is an enormous challenge represented by approaching history from a perspective

Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 23 January 2020

Freireyss, George Wilhem. “Viagem a Varias Tribus de Selvagens na Capitania de Minas

Monteiro, John M. “Tupis, Tapuias e Historiadores.” Tese de Livre-Docência, Instituto de

Pacó, Domingos Ramos. “Hámbric Anhamprán ti Mattâ Nhiñchopón? 1918.” In Lem­

Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 23 January 2020

(9.) Rogério Haesbaert and G. Bruce, “A Desterritorialização na Obra de Deleuze e Guat­

Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 23 January 2020

Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 23 January 2020

Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 23 January 2020

(24.) António Manuel Hespanha, Imbecillitas. As Bem-aventuranças da Inferioridade nas

(27.) António Manuel Hespanha, As Vésperas do Leviatã. A Sociedade do Antigo Regime

(28.) Accessed September 14, 2015, http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/revista/Rev_19/

(31.) Andrés Reséndez, “Borderlands of Bondage,” in The Oxford Handbook of Border­

Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 23 January 2020

(33.) Sérgio da Mata, “Chão de Deus: Catolicismo Popular, Espaço e Proto-urbanização

(34.) Ivan de Andrade Velasco, As Seduções da Ordem: Violência,Criminalidade e Admin­

(38.) Márcia Regina C. Naxara, “Estrangeiros em sua Própria Terra: Representações do

Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 23 January 2020

Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 23 January 2020

(47.) Darcy Ribeiro, Os Índios e a Civilização: a Integração das Populações Indígenas no

(49.) Espíndola, Sertão do Rio Doce.

(50.) “Continuação dos Documentos e Correspondência Oficial de Guido Thomaz Mar­

(51.) Saint-Hilaire, Viagens pelas Províncias, 276–277.

(55.) Freireyss, “Viagem a Varias Tribus de Selvagens,” 245.

Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 23 January 2020

Colonization, Mediation, and Mestizaje in the Border

Keywords: Keywordscatechesis, backlands/Sertões, Botocudos, mestizaje, revolts, ethnogenesis, national narra

Nineteenth-century Brazil can be characterized by extreme political heterogeneity, serv

Marlière’s countryman A. Saint-Hilaire, in evaluating the conditions in the Seventh Mili

Photograph taken on 5/24/1912. NCS. 7(8) 1363. Ar

It is important to note that landholders never stopped investing in the “entice

Shamanism and “Revolt”: The Capuchin Mis

Figure 16.2. The Colégio Santa Clara in the Itam

Pacó, Domingos Ramos. “Hámbric Anhamprán ti Mattâ Nhiñchopón? 1918.” In Lem

(9.) Rogério Haesbaert and G. Bruce, “A Desterritorialização na Obra de Deleuze e Guat

(31.) Andrés Reséndez, “Borderlands of Bondage,” in The Oxford Handbook of Border

(34.) Ivan de Andrade Velasco, As Seduções da Ordem: Violência,Criminalidade e Admin

(50.) “Continuação dos Documentos e Correspondência Oficial de Guido Thomaz Mar

(60.) Relatório do Presidente da Província, Antônio da Costa Pinto, à Assembléia Provin

(62.) John M. Monteiro, “Tupis, Tapuias e Historiadores” (Tese de Livre-Docência, Institu

(77.) Izabel Missagia de Mattos, “Catequese, Miscigenação e Nacionalidade: o Indigenis