O regresso dos Paiaku: deslocamentos e agências indígenas entre as Capitanias do Rio Grande do Norte e Ceará (1700-1768)

Abstract

Through the sertões of what was later administratively divided as Captaincies of Rio Grande do Norte and Ceará, lived many indigenous groups before the contact with european conquerors. The arrival of the Portuguese caused unprecedented changes in the ways these groups relate to each other and to others. This study aims to analyze the territorialization process for which Brazilian indigenous people Paiaku were submitted through XVIII century. The first territorialization process occurred when, as a consequence of the conflict known as Açu War (c. 1680 – 1720), the Paiaku were settled in different places between the Apodi and Choró river. The second process occurred when, by royal determination, two of these Paiaku groups were sent, with other indigenous groups, to be part of Portalegre village. The Indigenous Directory – legislation created in 1757 for the State of Grão-Pará and Maranhão, and adapted for the state of Brazil as Direction of Pernambuco in 1759, was the legal argument that promoted the displacement of these indigenous groups that sometimes were volunteer and other times were imposed by Crown authorities. However, part of the Paiaku group that had voluntarily moved from Ceará returned to the territory they once inhabited. Therefore, it is intended to analyze the agencies of the Paiaku people, not only through armed resistance and submission to the conquerors, but also through the decision-making and accomplishment of alliances with the authorities who represented the Portuguese Crown. For that reason, it will be analyzed handwritten manuscripts produced by these colonial authorities who coordinated these processes and were in frequent contact with this indigenous group, linking it to the existing bibliography about Paiaku and the creation of Jesuit reductions and indigenous villages. It is intended to reflect historically about how these indigenous groups appropriated their social territories at the same time that they confronted and experienced the territorialization process.