Indians Heathens Settlers in Southern Bahia

"Tame Indians," "Wild Heathens," and Settlers in Southern Bahia in the Late Eighteenth and
Early Nineteenth Centuries

Author(s): B. J. Barickman
Source: The Americas, Vol. 51, No. 3 (Jan., 1995), pp. 325-368
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1008226
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The Americas
51:3 January1995, 325-368
Copyrightby the Academy of American
FranciscanHistory
"TAME INDIANS," "WILD HEATHENS,"

AND SETTLERSIN SOUTHERNBAHIA
IN THE LATE EIGHTEENTHAND
EARLY NINETEENTHCENTURIES*
Let us setasidethepermanent
andsilentstruggle
againsttheIndians"
writesIlmarRohloffde Mattosin his recentstudyof politicalchange
in earlynineteenth-centuryBrazilthatdoes, indeed,forgo any at-
tempt to locateIndianswithin Brazilianhistory.Mattosapparently fails to
see any relevanceeven in askingquestionsabouthow "permanent"armed
conflictwithIndiansmighthaveinfluencedthecharacter andstructure
of the
emerging national
statethat he studies.'All in all, Mattos's
remarkstypify
an historiographythat at best romanticizesIndians,but even more often
eithersimplyignoresthemor relegatesthemto themarginsof Brazil'spast.
Indiansof course appearin works focusingon the very first stages of
colonialsettlement.They wereon handto greetPedroAlvaresCabraland
otherexplorersandto providelaborforearlycolonists.But,then,frommost
accounts,it wouldseemthat,withinthe spanof a few generations,disease,
warfare,andenslavementhadcompletelydestroyedthe nativepopulations
near and along the Braziliancoast.2In this way, ongoingprocessesof
* The author wishes to thank Judith Allen, Karen Anderson, Michael Gonzales,
Joseph L. Love,
Roger Nicholls, Laura Tabili, Suzanne Wilson, and especially Nils Jacobsen and Mary Karasch for
commenting on earlier versions of this essay and for suggesting relevant secondary sources.
1Ilmar Rohloff de Mattos,
O tempo saquarema (Sio Paulo, 1987), p. 71.
2 The generalneglect of Indiansas a topic relevantto broaderissues in Brazilian
historycan be verified
in two scholarly surveys: Leslie Bethell, ed.,The CambridgeHistory of Latin America, 6 vols. to date
(Cambridge, 1984-) (hereaftercited as CHLA);and S6rgio Buarquede Holandaand Boris Bausto, eds.,
Hist6ria geral da civilizaqdobrasileira, 11 vols. (SAoPaulo, 1960-84). Articles on Brazil between 1808
and 1930 in The CambridgeHistory contain only five brief referencesto Indians(3, pp. 679, 682, 745
n. 44, 752; and 5, p. 702). Similarly, the only chaptersdealing specifically with Indiansin the Hist6ria
Geral all concern the early colonial period. The same holds true for a university-level survey that
325
326 TAME INDIANS, WILD HEATHENS, AND SETTLERS
contact, accommodation,and conquest have become, in Mattos's words, a

"silent struggle," and Indianshave been transformedinto a topic of interest
only for scholarsconcernedwith the distantAmazon basin or with the early
decades of Portuguesesettlementin Brazil.
Yet, for all the devastationcaused by warfare,diseases, and enslavement

in those early decades, not all Indiansin coastal Brazil had conveniently and
quietly died off by the end of the seventeenthcentury. On the contrary,an
indigenous population survived in many regions along Brazil's Atlantic
seaboardin the late eighteenth and early nineteenthcenturies. To mention
only a few examples: Indianstogetherwith runawayslaves in Pernambuco
and Alagoas fought a three-year-longrebellion in the early 1830s against
provincial authoritiesand against sugar planterseager to seize their land.3
Victories in Indian wars at the end of the eighteenth century had allowed
settlement in the Paraiba Valley, the area near Rio de Janeiro that soon
became the most importantcenter of coffee productionin Brazil. Indeed,
well into the nineteenthcentury, foreign travellerscommentedon the num-
summarizesthe findings of researchin recent decades: Maria Yedda Linhares, ed., Hist6ria Geral do
Brasil (Rio de Janeiro, 1990).
Among the few works dealing with Indians in the late eighteenth and nineteenthcenturies are John
Hemming's AmazonFrontier: The Defeat of the Brazilian Indians (Cambridge,MA 1987), the sequel
to his Red Gold: The Conquestof the BrazilianIndians (Cambridge,MA 1978); and Darcy Ribeiro, Os
indios e a civilizagdo: a integragdo das populag6es indigenas no Brasil moderno, 2d ed. (Petr6polis,
1977), a now dated general survey. There are, however, signs of a growing interest in the topic, most
notably the publicationof a collection edited by Manuela Carneiroda Cunha, Hist6ria dos (ndios do
Brasil (Sdo Paulo, 1992) with an extensive bibliographythat is perhapsthe best guide to the historical
literatureon Indiansin Brazil. Specifically for Bahia, see the relevantarticlesin Cultura(Salvador,BA),
1:1 (1988), some of which are cited in the notes below.
At the same time, new studies continue to revise older interpretationsof Indian-settlerrelationsin the
early and mid-colonial period. See, for example, WarrenDean, "Las poblaciones indigenas del litoral
brasilefio de Sdo Paulo a Rio de Janeiro: Comercio, esclavitud, reducci6n y extinci6n" in Nicolas
Sainchez-Albornoz,ed., Poblaci6n y mano de obra en AmericaLatina, (Madrid, 1985), pp. 25-5 1; John
M. Monteiro, "From Indianto Slave: ForcedNative Laborand Colonial Society in Sdo Paulo duringthe
Seventeenth Century," Slavery and Abolition, 9:2 (September 1988), 105-127; and Muriel Nazzari,
"TransitionToward Slavery: Changing Legal Practice RegardingIndians in Seventeenth-CenturySdo
Paulo," The Americas, 49:5 (October, 1992), 131-156.
3 Marcus Joaquim Maciel de Carvalho, "Hegemony and Rebellion in Pernambuco(Brazil), 1821-
1835" (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,1989), chap. 6. At roughly the same
time and under circumstancesthat remain poorly understood,the "settled" Indians in the township of
PedraBranca, Bahia, also rebelled. JodoJose Reis, "A elite baianaface aos movimentos sociais, Bahia:
1824-1840," Revista de Hist6ria (Sio Paulo), 54:108 (October-December1976), p. 350. Forthcoming
research by Judith Allen promises to clarify the circumstances surroundingthis rebellion. In local
censuses from the late eighteenth and early nineteenthcenturies, Luiz Mott has found a sizeable Indian
populationliving in areas near the coast in the captaincy (later province) of Sergipe, located between
Bahia and Alagoas. See Luiz Mott, Sergipe del Rey: Populagdo, economia e sociedade (Aracaju, 1986),
pp. 29-35, 89-98.
B. J. BARICKMAN 327
ber of Indiansliving in the city of Rio de Janeiro.4The expansion of coffee

productioninto the province of Sao Paulo in the second half of the nine-
teenthcenturyalso resultedin conflict with Indians.In the 1860s and 1870s,
settlers and authoritiesin western Sao Paulo fought vicious wars of exter-
mination against the native Bororo and Kainging.5 Acknowledging that an
indigenous population survived forces us to confront, ratherthan ignore,
questions about how ongoing processes of contact, accommodation, and
conquest with Indians may have shaped patternsof settlementand frontier
expansion in various regions of Brazil.
This essay representsan initial attemptto incorporatethose questionsinto
a broaderinterpretationof Brazil's past througha case study of the comarca
(or judicial district)of Porto Seguro in southernBahia in the late eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries. There, beginning in the 1760s, royal offi-
cials, settlers, and backwoodsmen (sertanistas) collaboratedin efforts to
create a strongcommercialeconomy based on agricultureand long-distance
trade. Those efforts had from the very startto take into accountthe presence
in Porto Seguro of a sizeable indigenous populationconsisting of "indios
mansos (tame Indians)" and "gentio bravo (wild heathens)."6 For that
population, the Crown and royal officials elaborateda contradictoryand,
ultimately, impracticableproject: Wherever possible, Indians were to be
fully "domesticated"' '-that is, transformedinto a settled peasantry that
would contributeto an expandingcommercialeconomy and uphold Portu-
guese rule. But, at the same time, "domestication" would also clear the
4 Hemming, AmazonFrontier, pp. 97-101; Stanley J. Stein, Vassouras:A Brazilian Coffee County,
1850-1890: The Roles of Planter and Slave in a ChangingSociety [2d ed.] (New York, 1976), p. 120;
and (on Indiansin the city of Rio de Janeiro)MaryC. Karasch,Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro, 1808-1850
(Princeton, 1987), p. 7.
5 Joseph L. Love, Sdo Paulo in the Brazilian Federation, 1889- 1937 (Stanford, 1980), p. 15; Jodo
FranciscoTidei Lima, "A ocupagio da terranumaregiao do oeste do Estadode Sio Paulo" in Anais da
Semana de Estudos de Hist6ria Agrdria, de 19 a 23 de maio de 1980 (Assis, 1982), 267-284; Hemming,
AmazonFrontier, pp. 462-64. Quite typically, Emilia Viotti da Costa does not deal with Indians in her
discussions of the developmentand growthof the coffee economy in Sio Paulo in the nineteenthcentury
in Da senzala a' col6nia, 2d ed. (Sio Paulo, 1982).
6 The term
gentio in the expression "gentio bravo," found frequentlyin the sources, might also be
translatedsimply as "Indians" since the Aurelio registers"o indigena, o indio" as one possible meaning
for the word. But gentio, which is used in the sources as a collective noun and which is etymologically
related to the English word gentile, has as its first and primary meaning "aquele que professa o
paganismo;id6latra." Aurelio Buarquede Holanda Ferreira,comp., Novo Diciondrio da Lingua Por-
tuguesa, 2d ed., rev. and enl. (Rio de Janeiro, 1986), s.v. "gentio." It would seem clear that use of the
term to refer to Indians originally came about because Indians were neitherChristiansnor infidels. As
a translationfor gentio, heathens has the advantageof conveying the implicit contrastbetween uncon-
queredIndiansand "Christians"found even in some early nineteenth-centurysources. See, for example,
[Padre Manuel Aires de Casal], Corografia Brazilica, ou Relagdo Historico-geografica do Reino do
Brazil, 2 vols. (Rio de Janeiro, 1817; facs. reprint,Rio de Janeiro, 1947), 2, pp. 73-74.
way for furtherPortuguese7 settlementandultimatelylead to the complete

of as a
disappearance Indians distinctgroupwithinthe region'spopulation.
Directandopenresistanceto thisprojectonly subjectedthe Indianpopula-
tion to even greaterpressures,culminating,in the firstdecadesof the nine-
teenthcentury,in one of Brazil'slastofficialIndianwars.Althoughunsuc-
cessfuloverthe longrunin haltingfrontierexpansion,Indianresistancedid
delayandrestrictthe developmentof a strongcommercialeconomyin the
7 Throughoutthis essay, the termsPortuguese, Portuguese-speakingsettlers, and variantsthereof are

used more or less interchangeablyto describethosefree people, regardlessof place of birthor race, who
accepted Portuguese rule and neither saw themselves nor were seen by others as either "Indian" or
"African." The terms therefore do not refer to black or mulatto slaves or to "Indians." Cf. Susan
Migden Socolow, "SpanishCaptives in IndianSocieties: CulturalContactAlong the ArgentineFrontier,
1600-1835," Hispanic AmericanHistorical Review, 72:1 (February1992), 75 n. 3, who, in dealing with
the Argentine frontierboth before and after 1810, employs Spanish in a similar way.
Using Portuguese to refer broadly to the free, non-"Indian" population is, of course, imprecise
insofaras it does not allow for clear distinctionsbetween the colonial power and local settlers. But, since
this essay does not deal with disputes and differences between the PortugueseCrown and local settlers,
the lack of precision should not be a source of problems. Moreover, assigning this broad meaning to
Portuguese has advantages.On the one hand, it apparentlycorrespondsto usage among some Indiansin
southern Bahia. Te6filo Ottoni, who in the 1840s and 1850s had repeated contacts with groups of
unconqueredBotocudos, noted thatthe Indiansreferred"to all Christians"as "Portuguese." Theophilo
Benedicto Ottoni, "Noticia sobre os selvagens do Mucury," Revista do InsitutoHist6rico e Geogrdfico
Brasileiro (hereaftercited as RIHGB), 21 (1854), 201. Also see Idade d'Ouro, 63 (1811) in Maria
Beatriz Nizza da Silva, A primeira gazeta da Bahia: A Idade d'Ouro no Brasil (Sdo Paulo and Brasilia,
1978), pp. 55-57. On the other hand, free non-Indiansin southernBahia also seem to have assigned the
same meaning to the term Portuguese in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. See, for
example, the 1818 partial household census of the "Portuguese" militia district in the township of
Santar6m, located just north of Porto Seguro in the comarca of Ilh6us: "Lista da Companhia dos
Portuguezesda Villa dos Indios de Sdtar6e seu Termodo Tergodas Ordendngasdo CapitdoM6r da Villa
do CamamuiAntonio Joz6 Mello" (1818), Arquivo Pdiblicodo Estado da Bahia, Salvador, Segqo
Hist6rica (hereafterabbreviatedas APEB, SH), 246. Santar6mwas at the time officially a vila de indios
(Indiantown) and had a populationof somewhere aroundtwo hundredIndians. Luiz Mott, "Os indios
do sul da Bahia: economia e sociedade (1740-1854)," Cultura(Salvador, BA), 1:1 (1988),
Populaqgo,
98, 100. The 1818 census includes among the "Portuguese" residentsof Santar6mindividualswho are
classified in the same census not only as "brancos (whites)," but also as "pardos (mulattos)" and
"pretos (blacks)." Although some of the "whites" may have been Portugueseby birth, most of them
had surely been bornin Brazil. It is likewise highly improbablethatmany free or freed black and mulatto
"Portuguese" inhabitantsof Santar6mhad been born in Portugal.Slaves, in contrastwith the "Portu-
guese" population,are not listed individuallyby name;the census, instead, simply provides the number
of slaves owned by each household. At the same time, not a single individualin this household list is
classified as an "Indian." Clearly then, at least in this census of an "Indian town," Brazilian-born
whites as well as free or freed blacks and mulattos were all "Portuguese"; but Indians were not. For
other instances where Bahian sources use the term Portuguese, apparentlywithout regard to place of
birth, to draw a distinctionbetween the free local populationand "Indians," see, for example, Baltasar
da Silva Lisboa, "Officio . . . para D. Rodrigo de Sousa Coutinho" (20 March 1799), Anais da
Biblioteca Nacional (hereaftercited as ABN), 36 (1914), 115; "Informagio de alguns moradoresda villa
do Prado . . . sobre os Indios" (16 October 1803); Domingos FerreiraMaciel, "Officio . . . para o
Governador da Bahia ... sobre os Indios" (16 October 1803); Luis Tomais Navarro de Campos,
"Officio . . . para o Governadorda Bahia em que o informa sobre o estado de civilisaFgo em que se
encontravamos Indios da Comarca" (23 January1804), all in ABN, 37 (1915), 177-180.
B. J. BARICKMAN 329
region. Even as late as 1820, export agriculturehad failed to take firm root
in Porto Seguro; despite the growth of productionfor local markets, the
region remaineda poor backwaterwhere settlers still worriedabout Indian
attacks.
Indianresistancewas nothingnew in PortoSeguro. The generalpovertythat

characterizedthe region in the mid-eighteenthcenturywas itself largely the
result of earlier conflicts between Indiansand settlers. In 1534, the Crown
had awarded Porto Seguro as an hereditarycaptaincy to Pero do Campo
Tourinho, a wealthy proprietorfrom northernPortugal,who soon thereafter
founded the first permanentPortuguesesettlementalong this stretchof the
Brazilian coast. Tourinho and his fellow colonists had, it seems, few real
difficulties in overcoming the initial resistanceof the native Tupinikin, the
Tupi-speakingIndians who lived on or near the coast.8 Relying on Indian
labor, they opened clearings in the forest to plant sugar-cane and built
engenhos (sugar-mills).9The colony, despite internaldisputes, would soon
show signs of prosperityand growth. By the 1570s, Porto Seguro could
already boast seven engenhos and three Portuguesevilas (towns or town-
ships): Santa Cruz, Santo Amaro, and Porto Seguro.o10
Yet, within a decade, the colony had been all but abandoned.Imported
diseases spread among the Tupinikinat the very same time that increased
8 The Tupinikinwere one of the several groupsof Indianswho spoke languagesbelonging to the Tupi
linguistic family and who inhabitedlarge areas of coastal Northeasternand SoutheasternBrazil at the
time Portuguesesettlementbegan. On Tupi-speakingIndians, see Alfred M6traux, "The Tupinambd"
in JulianH. Steward, ed., Handbookof SouthAmericanIndians, 7 vols. (Washington,D.C., 1946-59),
3, pp. 95-135; Florestan Fernandes, "Antecedentes indigenas: Organizaqio social das tribos tupis,"
Hist6ria Geral da CivilizaqdoBrasileira, tome 1, vol. 1, pp. 72-86; Carlos Fausto, "Fragmentosde
hist6riae culturatupinambi:Da etnologia como instrumentocritico de conhecimentoetno-hist6rico" in
Hist6ria dos indios, 381-96; and Carlos Ott, Pre-hist6ria da Bahia (Salvador, 1958), pp. 11-33.
9 Although it focuses on the area aroundthe the Bay of All Saints, near the city of Salvador,the best
discussion of Indianlaborand the early developmentof the sugarindustryin NortheasternBrazil is Stuart
B. Schwartz, Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society: Bahia, 1550-1835 (Cambridge,
1985), chaps. 2-3.
1o J.F. de Almeida Prado, A Bahia e as capitanias do centro do Brasil (1530-1626): Hist6ria da
formaCdo da sociedade brasileira, 3 vols., Brasiliana, 247-247-b (Sdo Paulo, 1945-1950), 1, pp.
256-326; H.B. Johnson, "The Portuguesesettlementof Brazil, 1500-80," CHLA, 1, 279-80; Alexander
Marchant,Do escamboa escraviddo, trans. CarlosLacerda,2d ed., Brasiliana,225 (Sio Paulo;Brasilia,
1980), pp. 42, 65; Filipe Nunes de Carvalho, "Do descobrimentoa unido ib6rica," in HaroldJohnson
and Maria Beatriz Nizza da Silva, eds., O imperio luso-brasileiro, 1520-1620, (Lisbon, 1992), pp.
126-27.
demand for labor strainedtheir relationshipwith the settlers. The resulting

conflicts not only acceleratedthe decline of the Indianpopulation, but also
drove away many of the survivingTupinikin.Their flight, in turn, exposed
the colony to attacksand raidsby variousgroupsof non-TupiIndianswhom
the Portugueseindiscriminatelycalled the "Aimor6"'-aTupi word meaning
"evil person" or "killer." Inhabitingthe forested hills and valleys that lay
beyond the coastal strip, the Aimor6s seem to have been for the most part
"true nomads" whose hunting skills made them formidable enemies."
Raids and attacks by the Aimor6s soon laid waste to canefields and sugar
mills of Porto Seguro. "There occurredin this land a plague of Aimor6s,"
wrote Gabriel Soares de Sousa in 1587. "The engenhos no longer make
sugar because all the slaves and men were killed, and those who escaped
from the clutches [of the Aimor6] took such a fear of them that one need
only say 'Aimor6s' and they flee the fields, trying to save themselves."
Soares de Sousa did not exaggerate in claiming that, along with the neigh-
boring captaincy of Ilh6us, Porto Seguro had been "destroyed and almost
entirely depopulatedfrom fear of these barbarians."'12The Portuguesepop-
ulation in Porto Seguro had droppedfrom 1,320 in 1570 to 600 twenty years
later; settlers had abandonedtwo of the captaincy's three towns; and only
one of the seven engenhos was still in operation.13
Productionof sugar for export in Porto Seguro never recoveredfrom the
Aimor6 attacks of the 1570s and 1580s.14 The colony, lacking a strong
export economy, would remain for the next century and a half a largely
forgotten and sparsely settled captaincy where Portuguese control barely
extended beyond a few fortified coastal towns and a handfulof Jesuit mis-
" Hemming, Red Gold, pp. 93-94; CharlotteEmmerichand RuthMontserrat"Sobre

Aimords, Krens
e Botocudos: Notas lingiiisticas," Boletim do Museu do indio, 3 (October 1975), 5-6. Emerich and
Montserratalso point out (pp. 6-7) that seventeenth-and early eighteenth-centurysources more often use
the term "Grens" or variants such as "Grem" or "Guer6m" to describe the Aimor6s. In the late
eighteenthcentury, "Aimor6" once again became common, but would soon give way to "Botocudo."
12 Gabriel Soares de Sousa,
Notfcia do Brasil [1587], with commentariesby [FranciscoAdolfo de]
Varnhagen,Piraji da Silva, and [FredericoG.] Edelweiss (Sio Paulo, 1957), pp. 30-31 (referringalso
to the destructionin Ilh6us).
13 Johnson, "The Portuguese settlement," pp. 280-79; Marchant,Do escambo, pp. 112-13; Hem-
ming, AmazonFrontier, pp. 93-94.

14 Especially, from the late eighteenth century onward, there are scattered references to several
engenhos in Porto Seguro, but these seem to have generally been small mills that producedsugar and
sugar-cane brandy mainly for local consumption. The Royal Treasury Board and, after 1822, the
provincial tax authoritiesin Salvadorkept between 1807 and 1873 a register of all engenhos that sent
sugar to warehouses in the city for export. The name of only one engenho located in Porto Seguro
appearsin the register. By contrast,the authoritiesregisteredat variousdates forty-oneengenhos located
in townships in the former captaincy of Ilh6us. "Matriculados Engenhos da Capitaniada Bahia pelos
Dizimos Reais administradospela Juntada Real Fazenda" (1807-1874), APEB, SH, 632.
B. J. BARICKMAN 331
sions.15Cut off from the main circuits of colonial trade, a small population
of settlers along with some of the survivingTupinikindrew their livelihood
from a combinationof subsistence farming, fishing, and logging.16
The late eighteenth and early nineteenthcenturies, by contrast, brought a

markedincreasein both settlementand trade.Between 1759 and 1800, eight
new townships (vilas) were established:Belmonte, Vila Verde, Trancoso,
Prado, Alcobaqa, Vila Viqosa, Portalegre,and Sao Mateus. The population
living in areascontrolledby the Portuguesealreadynumberedroughly 8,300
in 1780.17 Porto Seguro's populationwould nearly double in the next four
decades to reach a total of over 16,000 by 1820, including3,650 Indiansor
slightly more than one-fifth of the total.18 (See table 1.) Moreover, the
15 On the Jesuit missions, see SerafimLeite, S.I., Hist6ria da Companhiade Jesus no Brasil, 10 vols.
(Rio de Janeiro, Lisbon, 1938-45), 5, pp. 227-42. Unfortunately,Leite was unable to uncover infor-
mationon the Jesuitmissions in PortoSeguro thatwould allow for any detailedassessmentof their social
and culturalimpacton the indigenouspopulation.This makes it, in turn, difficult to gauge changes after
the expulsion of the Jesuits.
16 Informationon Porto Seguro in this period is scant. The limited growth and development of the
region in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries can, however, be gauged from the detailed
descriptionswrittenin 1764 by Porto Seguro's ouvidor (royaljudge), Tome Couceirode Abreu: "Rela-
qdo sobre as Villas e Rios da Capitaniade Porto Seguro," "Noticia sobre a Barrae Rio da Povoaqio de
S. Matheus," "Noticia sobre a Barra do Rio Mucury," "Noticia sobre a Barra do Rio Peruipe,"
"Noticia sobre as Barrasdo Rio da Villa de Santo Antonio das Caravellas," "Noticia sobre a Barrado
Rio Itanhem," "Noticia sobre a Barrado Rio Jucuructi," "Noticia sobre a Barrado Porto Seguro,"
"Noticia sobre a Barra do Rio da freguezia de Santa Cruz," "Noticia sobre a Enseada da Coroa
Vermelha," "Noticia sobre a Barrado Rio Grande," all in ABN, 32 (1910), 38-42, 54-62.
Anotherindicationof the region's continuingpovertycomes from a 1779 assessmentfor the donativo
(a special tax established to fund the rebuilding of Lisbon after the earthquakeof 1755). The total
assessment for the Captaincy-Generalof Bahia (which, by 1779, alreadyincludedPorto Seguro) was set
at Rs.29:166$666. Toward that sum, Porto Seguro contributedonly Rs.120$000-that is, less than 0.5
percent of the total. "Mappa do estabelecimentodo donativo e contribuiqgovoluntraq. paga annamte
. a Capita da Ba . . ." (1779), APEB, SH, materialnio classificado (1988).
17 Here I have accepted Dauril Alden's judgmentthat, of the populationcounts carriedout in the late
eighteenthcentury, the census of 1780 is the most accurate.Dauril Alden, "The Populationof Brazil in
the Late EighteenthCentury:A PreliminaryStudy," Hispanic AmericanHistorical Review, 43:2 (May
1963), 186. A summaryof the results of this census can be found in "Mappa da enumeraqioda gente
e povo desta Capitaniada Bahia .. ." (1780), ABN, 32 (1910), 480.
18 The censuses on which table 1 is based classified residents of Porto Seguro in four "racial"
categories: branco (white), pardo (literally, "brown"; but commonly used to refer to mulattos),preto
(black), and indio (Indian). The fact that categories such as caboclo, mameluco,mestiqo, curiboca, and
cafuso for mixed descendantsof Indiansand Europeansor Indiansand Africansdo not appearin any of
the censuses should not be taken as indicatingthe absence of miscegenationin Porto Seguro. There are,
in fact, scattered references to miscegenation involving Indians in other sources. It is possible that
mestigos, etc. may have been classified as pardos. Yet, it also seems that miscegenation involving
naturalist Georg Wilhelm Freyreiss had in 1818 received permission to

establish of colony of Germanimmigrantsjust south of Vila Viqosa. Two
years later, thirteenGermansettlershad alreadytaken up residence at Frey-
reiss's Col6nia Leopoldina.19
The developmentof tradeand agricultureaccompaniedpopulationgrowth

in southernBahia. The region emerged in the late eighteenthcenturyas an
importantsupplieroffarinha de mandioca(cassavaflour) and salted fish for
urbanmarketswithin Brazil. Farinha made by farmersin Porto Seguro was
sold not only in Salvador, the Bahiancapital, but also in Rio de Janeiroand
in Pernambuco.20 Trade in farinha allowed settlers in the region to acquire
larger numbers of imported African slaves and Brazilian-bornslaves of
African descent. Over 4,800 such slaves lived and worked in Porto Seguro
by 1820, when they already accounted for just over thirty percent of the
region's population(See table 1). Slaves could be used not only in logging,
fishing, and cultivatingcassava, but also in producingexport crops such as
coffee, which two wanderingItalianmissionarieshad reportedlyintroduced
to residents of the comarca in the late 1780s. Soon afterwards,farmersin
the township of Caravelasbegan to plant coffee groves with seeds left by
Indians may have been less common in southernBahia than elsewhere in Brazil. Working with eccle-
siastical court records from 1813 for townships in the former captaincy of Ilh6us (just north of Porto
Seguro), Luiz Mott found only one mameluco (person of mixed Europeanand Indian ancestry) among
the 383 persons (includingeighty-five Indians)who filed accusations.Mott, "Os indios," pp. 100, 109.
Likewise, an 1837 census of the parishof Nossa Senhorada Pena in the township of Porto Seguro lists
only eighty-seven mamelucos and curibocas, who accountedfor less than four percent of the parish's
total population. "Mapa Popularda Freguesiade N.S.a da Penna de Porto Seguro-1837. . .," APEB,
SH, 5212. In Trancoso in 1840, mamelucos representeda mere 2.2 percentof the population. "Popu-
laqio da Freguesia de S. Jose Batista de Trancoso. . ." (1840), APEB, SH, 5228.
19 "Mappa dos Habitantes. Colonos Allemies que existem no Lugar denominado Leopoldina . . .
1820" in "Mapas estatisticosda comarcade Porto Seguro," Biblioteca Nacional, Rio de Janeiro,Seqdo
de Manuscritos(hereafterabbreviatedas BN-s/m), 1-31,19,15. On Freyreiss, see Moema ParenteAugel,
Viajantesestrangeiros na Bahia oitocentista, with a preface by Am6ricoJacobinaLacombe (Sio Paulo
and Brasilia, 1980), pp. 44-47.
20
Jos6 da Silva Lisboa, "Carta muito interessante. . parao Dr. Domingos Vandelli, Director do
Real JardimBotanico de Lisboa, em que lhe dainoticia desenvolvida sobre a Capitaniada Bahia ..."
(1781), ABN, 32 (1910), 503; Luis dos Santos Vilhena, A Bahia no seculo XVIII, notes and commen-
taries by Braz do Amaral; presentationby Edison Carneiro, 2d ed. [1st ed. published with the title
Recopilaqdo de noticias soteropolitanas . . ., 1921], 3 vols. (Salvador, 1969); Thomas Lindley, Nar-
rative of a Voyage to Brazil; . . . With General Sketches of the Country, Its Natural Productions,
Colonial Inhabitants,&c. and a Description of the Cityand Provinces of St. Salvadoreand Porto Seguro
... (London, 1805), pp. 228-29; Luis Tomis Navarrode Campos, "Itinerarioda viagem que fez por
terrada Bahia ao Rio de Janeiropor ordem do principeregente, em 1808 .. .," RIHGB, 47:28 (1846),
444-45, 449-50; Larissa Virginia Brown, "InternalCommercein a Colonial Economy: Rio de Janeiro
and Its Hinterland,1790-1822" (Ph.D. diss., Universityof Virginia, 1986), pp. 350-53; Domingos
Jos6
Antonio Rebello, "Corographia, ou abreviada historia geographica do Imperio do Brasil" (1829),
Revista do Instituto Geogrdfico e Hist6rico da Bahia, 55 (1929), 190, 192-95.
TABLE 1
POPULATION OF THE COMARCAOF PORTO SEGURO, CA. 1
Free non-Indian Black and M

Populationc Slaves
Townshipor Total
Year Parishb Population Number (%) Number
1819 Caravelas 3,552 1,930 (54.3) 1,434

1820 Sio Mateus 3,120 1,351 (43.3) 1,336
1820 Porto Seguroe 2,114 1,365 (64.6) 593
1818 Alcobaqa 1,841 848 (46.1) 517
1817 Vila Vigosa 1,241 669 (53.9) 303
1819 Prado 1,036 309 (29.8) 262
1819 Santa Cruze 968 565 (58.4) 194
1820 Belmonte 882 407 (46.1) 116
1819 Trancoso 526f 0 (0.0) 0
1820 Vila Verde 448 19 (4.2) 3
1819 Portalegre 292 72 (24.7) 77
Total, ca. 1820 16,020 7,535 (47.0) 4,835
Note: Percentagesmay not sum to 100.0 as a result of rounding.
a
See note 18 in the text.
b i.e., vila orfrequesia.
' Includes whites as well as freeborn and freed blacks and mulattos
(pardos).
d
Includesonly Indians living under Portuguese rule.
' Parishin the
township of Porto Seguro.
f Does not include the families of a parish priest, a scribe who doubled as the directorof Indians, and a merch
Sources: "Mapas estatisticos da comarca de Porto Seguro," BN-s/m, 1-31,19,15 (population counts for the
non-Indiansliving in Trancoso).
missionaries.21 The comarca continuedto export timber as well as various

plant fibers used in makingrope and broomsand small amountsof cotton.22
The changes thatovertookPortoSeguro in the late eighteenthcenturyhad
their origins in the reform policies of the Marquisof Pombal. Ruling Por-
tugal as a virtual dictator between 1750 and 1777, Pombal launched an
ambitiousprogramof reformsdesigned to promotethe growth of tradeand
agriculturein Brazil and, at the same time, to increasethe Crown's authority
over its American colonies.23 Almost immediatelythose reforms began to
alter life in the half-forgottencaptaincyof Porto Seguro, where, as in other
partsof Brazil, Pombalorderedthe expulsion of Jesuits from their missions
in 1759. Then came administrativechange:PortoSegurowas integratedinto
the Captaincy-Generalof Bahia as a comarca.24 The ouvidores (royal
judges) appointedto administerthe comarca in the 1760s and 1770s took up
the task of consolidatingthe Portuguesepresenceon the south Bahiancoast.
The instructionsthey received from the Crown orderedthem to encourage
furthersettlementby creating new townships and to promote tradeby im-
proving communicationswithin the comarca.25
On their arrival in Porto Seguro, the ouvidores must have immediately
recognized the enormous difficulties they would face. The comarca for
21
Jodo Antonio de SampaioVianna, "Breve noticiada primeiraplantade caf6 que houve na Comarca
de Caravellas ao Sul da Bahia," RIHGB, 5 (1847), 77-79.
22
See the trade figures for various townships for various years between 1813 and 1820 in "Mapas
estatisticos da comarca de Porto Seguro," BN-s/m, 1-31,19,15.
23
On the Pombaline reforms and Portuguese colonial policies after Pombal, see Francisco Jos6
Calazans Falcon, A epoca pombalina (Politica econ6mica e monarquiailustrada) (Sao Paulo, 1983);
Dauril Alden, "Late colonial Brazil, 1750-1808" in CHLA,2, 612-27; KennethR. Maxwell, Conflicts
and Conspiracies:Brazil and Portugal, 1750-1807 (Cambridge,1973), chaps. I-II, VIII; and Fernando
A. Novais, Portugal e Brasil na crise do Antigo Sistema Colonial (1777-1808) (Sao Paulo, 1979).
24 On these administrative
changes, see Dauril Alden, Royal Governmentin Colonial Brazil: With
Special Reference to the Administrationof the Marquis of Lavradio, 1769-1779 (Berkeley and Los
Angeles, 1968), pp. 39-40. Alden does not list Porto Seguro as a subordinatedcaptaincy within the
Captaincy-Generalof Bahia, which suggests that the area had not lost all autonomy. In fact, contem-
poraries still referred to Porto Seguro as a "captaincy" in the early nineteenth century. The exact
relationshipbetween PortoSeguro and the governmentof Bahia thus remainsunclear.In his 1759 survey
of the Captaincyof Bahia, Jos6 Caldas referredto Porto Seguro as both a "captaincy" and a "comarca
desta cidade (comarca of this city [i.e., Salvador])" with a "lay ouvidor provided by this government
[i.e., the governmentof the Captaincyof Bahia]." Joz6 Caldas, "Noticia Geral de toda esta Capitania
da Bahia desde o seu descobrimentoat6 o prezente anno de 1759," Revista do InstitutoGeogrdfico e
Hist6rico da Bahia, 57 (1931), 31-32. In turn, a summaryof a 1775 census describes Porto Seguro as
a "comarca" and notes that "the ecclesiastical government[of Porto Seguro] belongs to [the diocese]
of Rio de Janeiro,but the civil and militarygovernmentbelongs to Bahia." Vilhena, A Bahia, 2, "Mapa
de tdas as freguesias," between pp. 460 and 461.
25 I have inferred the content of those instructionsfrom references to them in
reports filed by the
ouvidores, most of which are cited in various notes below.
B. J. BARICKMAN 335
which they were now responsible encompassed a large, sparsely settled

territory,extending along the coast some 400 kilometersfrom the Rio Pardo
in the north to the Rio Doce in the south.26 To the west, separatingPorto
Seguro from settlements and mining camps in the captaincy of Minas
Gerais, were ill-defined boundariesthatremainedentirely underthe control
of various groups of unconqueredIndians, includingat least four largerand
generally hostile groups: the Patax6, the Maxacali, the Camaci (or Mon-
goi6), and the Botocudo. All four groupslived in nomadicor semi-nomadic
bands, and, in contrastwith the coastal Tupinikin,all spoke loosely related
languages from the large Ge linguistic family.27The most feared of these
Indians were those known in Portugueseas the Botocudo, a name derived
the Portugueseword botoqueor disc-a referenceto theirpracticeof wearing
wooden discs in their lower lips and ear lobes.28The Portugueserepeatedly
accused the Botocudo of cannibalismand identifiedthem with the Aimor6s
who had destroyedthe region's sugarindustryin the late sixteenthcentury.29
Even on the coast, Portuguesecontrol was still confined to a few scattered
26
Thus, the comarca of Porto Seguro encompassedareas that, after independence, would be incor-
poratedinto the province of EspiritoSanto:viz., the territorylying between the Rio Mucuri(the current
boundarybetween Bahia and Espirito Santo) and the Rio Doce, which included the township of Sao
Mateus.
27 On these Indian groups, see the following articles in vol. 1 of the Handbook of South American
Indians: Alfred M6traux, "The Botocudo," pp. 531-40; Alfred M6trauxand Curt Nimuendajii, "The
Mashacalf, Patash6, and Malali Linguistic Families," pp. 541-45; and, by the same two authors, "The
Camacan Linguistic Family," pp. 547-52. Also see Maria Hilda B. Paraiso, "Os Botocudos e sua
trajet6riahist6rica" in Hist6ria dos indios, pp. 423-28; idem, "Os Krenakdo Rio Doce, a pacificaqao,
o aldeamentoe a luta pela terra," Revista de Filosofia e das Ciencias Humanas(Salvador, BA), 2 (June
1991), 12-23; Omar da Rocha Jr., "Persist ncia, mudanqae perspectivasdos Patax6 meridionais,"
Cultura (Salvador, BA), 1:1 (1988), 61-67; Emerich and Montserrat,"Sobre Aimor6s, Gren e Boto-
cudo," pp. 1-45; and Greg Urban, "A hist6ria da cultura brasileirasegundo as linguas nativas" in
Hist6ria dos indios, 88, 91 (for linguistic identification).It should, however, be noted that much of the
available literature,projectingbackward,tends to portraythese groupsof Indiansas clearly distinct and
fixed over time and disregardsthe possibility of shifts in ethnic identities and boundaries.
28 The Botocudo, it seems, referredto themselves
generically as the Kren, their word for "head," a
term which appears in Portuguese-languagesources from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as
Grens, Guer6m, Grem, etc. But it is not at all clear that all Indiansidentifiedin the sources as "Grens"
were Botocudos. The availablesources from the second or thirddecade of the nineteenthcenturyonward
sometimes identify individual groups of Botocudos by specific the names such as Jiporok, Naknanuk,
Krenak, etc., which the groups themselves apparentlyused and which weres were derived either from
leaders' names or from referencesto geographicfeatures.Emerichand Montserrat,pp. 4-7; Paraiso, "Os
Krenakdo Rio Doce," p. 12.
It is worth noting that the Txukahamie of Goiaisand Pardialso use lip and ear disks and that, like the
Botocudo of southernBahia, they belong linguisticallyto Ge language family. Mary Karasch,personal
communication;Urban, "A hist6ria da cultura," pp. 88, 90 (for linguistic identification).
29 See, e.g., "Carta do
Vigario geral da freguezia de N.S. da Conceiqgode Minas Novas . . . para
o Arcebispo da Bahia" (24 February1794), ABN, 34 (1912), 314; Campos, "Itinerario," p. 467; Joao
settlements, separatedby considerable expanses of wilderness and dense

forest where no authoritycould guaranteethe security of lone travellers.
Porto Seguro's ouvidores correctly realized that, in carrying out their

orders, they could not count solely on the comarca's small and generally
impoverished Portuguese-speakingpopulation. The governmentsof Bahia
and Rio de Janeirodid send convicted criminals(degredados)to help settle
the region, but their numberswere also small, seldom amountingto more
than a few dozen a year in the 1770s. Moreover, the deported criminals
often fled shortly after arrivingratherthan face the difficulties of living in
a poor frontierregion.30Thus, for the time being, any effort to develop a
strongcommercialeconomy would necessarilyinvolve the indios mansos of
Porto Seguro, the "tame" or settled Indians who lived in Portuguese-
controlledareasof the comarca and who had been "freed" from the Jesuits
in 1759.31Developing Porto Seguro would mean transformingthese Indians
Gonqalves da Costa, "Memoria summariae compendiosada Conquistado Rio Pardo" (1806-1807),

ABN, 37 (1915), 456; [Aires de Casal], Corografia, 2, p. 72 n.; Maximiliano (Principe de Wied-
Neuwied) [i.e., Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied], Viagem ao Brasil, trans. EdgardSiissekind de Men-
donqa and FlHvioPoppe de Figueiredo, 2d ed., Brasiliana, 5" S6rie, 1 (Sdo Paulo, 1958), p. 220.
Following late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-centurysources, some scholars are quick to identify
the Botocudo with the Indiansknown as Aimor6s in the sixteenthcentury. See, for example, Hemming,
Amazon Frontier, p. 85; M6traux, "The Botocudo," p. 530; and Paraiso, "Os Botocudos," pp. 413,
428. In "Sobre os Aimords" (p. 10), Emmerichand Montserratargue that linguistic data suggest "a
genetic link . . . between the language of the ancient Aimor6s or Grens and that of the Botocudos."
Although plausible, the argumentis based on slim evidence, consistingof a single lexical item along with
the toponym "Sincora" and a phonetic alternationfound both in Botocudo words and in recorded
variationsof the name "Gren." Thatthe Aimores and the Botocudomay have spoken relatedlanguages
does not, however, allow for an automaticor exclusive identificationof one group with the other. Such
an identificationis at presentopen to questionnot only becauseethnohistoricalknowledge aboutboth the
Aimor6s and the Botocudo remainsquite limited, but also because the term "Aimor6" could be applied
to any numberof differentgroups of hostile non-TupiIndians. See Carlos Ott, "A distribuiqiotribal e
geografica dos indios baianos," Cultura(Salvador,BA), 1:1 (1988), 127-28; ibid., Pre-Hist6ria, p. 16;
and Manuela Carneiroda Cunha, "Politica indigenista no s6culo XIX" in Hist6ria dos indios, pp.
136-54. Also weighing against any automatic or exclusive identification of the Botocudo with the
Aimor6s is the fact that, in his descriptionof the Aimor6s, GabrielSoares de Sousa (Noticia, pp. 30-31)
makes no reference to the use of lip or ear discs that distinguishedthe Botocudo and that so impressed
later observers.
30 JOs6Xavier Machado Monteiro, "Carta .. ." (April 1773), ABN 32 (1910), 272; idem, "Carta
. (para Martinhode Mello e Castro)" (1 January1774), ABN 32 (1910), 277.
31 The available sources contain very little informationon the ethnic identity of these Indians. A
mid-eighteenth-centurylist of missions administered,until 1759, by the Jesuitsclassifies the inhabitants

at Trancoso as "Tupinikinsor Tabajarasmixed with Tupinan" and those at Vila Verde as "Tupinikins
mixed with Pontuntuns."Caldas, "Noticia Geral," "Mapa geral de todas as Missoens .. .," between
pp. 30-31. The Tupinanand the Tabajara,like the Tupinikin,were Tupi-speakers.It is unclearwhat sort
of Indiansthe Pontuntum(a group not mentionedelsewhere in the sources) were. Although it seems safe
to assume that, elsewhere in the mid- and late eighteenthcentury, most settled Indianswere descendants
of the originalTupinikin,this was not always the case. Near the mouthof the Rio Jequitinhonha,in what
B. J. BARICKMAN 337
into loyal subjects of the Crown who in one way or anothercontributedto

the growth and development of trade and agriculture.
Achieving that transformationwould not be an easy task. Jose Xavier

MachadoMonteiro, appointedouvidorin 1767, wrote that, on his arrivalin
the comarca, he had found the settled Indians"vile, lazy, and corrupt"with
a "tendency towardtheir almost congenitaland irreparablevices." He later
explained that those "almost congenital vices" consisted of "sloth and
prodigality."32 In other words, not only did the Indianspersist in speaking
theirown "barbarous"languages, in living in large single-roomthatchhuts,
and in wearing little, if any, clothing, but-and even worse-they also man-
aged for the most partto survive withoutproducingmarketablecommodities
and withouthiringthemselves out to settlers.The fact thatIndiansremained
a culturallydistinct group only underscoredthe Crown's limited and weak
authority over the region while their ability to survive outside a market
economy defied the very logic of Brazil's colonial status.
In dealing with the Indianpopulationof PortoSeguro, the royaljudges of
Porto Seguro had at hand an extensive body of legislation known as the
"Diret6rio dos indios" or "Directorate of Indians." Drafted in 1757 by
Francisco Xavier MendonqaFurtado, Pombal's brother, and approvedby
the Crown one year later, the Diret6riooriginallyappliedonly to Indiansin
the northernand Amazonian captaincies of Pardiand Maranhao, but was
soon extended to all parts of Brazil. It transferredcontrol over aldeias
(villages of settled Indians) from missionaries to civil authorities. An ap-
pointed white "director" and a scribe would now be posted in every Indian
aldeia and charged with the tasks of "civilizing" the Indians, removing
them from the "dense darknessesof their rustic ways," and encouraging
them to practice settled agriculture.33
would become the township of Belmonte, lived the Indiansknown as the Menhis, a groupof Camacds,
who had agreed to live underPortugueserule in 1628. Tome Couceiro de Abreu, "Officio ... (parao
Ministrodos Negocios do UltramarFranciscoXavier de MendonqaFurtado)"(16 June 1764), ABN, 32
(1910), 52; Maximiliano, Viagem, p. 235.
32
JOs6Xavier MachadoMonteiro, "Carta... dirigidaao Rei" (24 February1769), ABN, 32 (1910),
207; idem, "Carta ... (para Martinhode Mello e Castro)" (1 May 1774), ABN, 32 (1910), 277.
33Directorio, que se deve observar nas povoaqoens dos indios do Pard, e Maranhdo ... (Lisbon,
1758), facs. reprint in Carlos de Aratijo Moreira Neto, Indios da Amaz6nia, de maioria a minoria
(1750-1850) (Petr6polis, 1988), pp. 165-203; Hemming, AmazonFrontier, chap. 3.
For a recent analysis of the Diret6rioin one areaof the Amazon basin, see Nidia Farage,As muralhas
do sertcdo:Os povos indtgenasno rio Branco e a colonizaqdo(Rio de Janeiro, 1991), chap. IV. Also see
Mary Karasch, "Catequese e cativeiro: Polftica indigenista em Goias, 1780-1889" in Hist6ria dos
(ndios, pp. 397-412 (one of the very few studiesof an areaotherthanAmaz6niathatdeals with the aldeia
system and with local Indian policy in general).
In some ways, the Diret6rio merely secularizedand expandedthe system of supervisedvillages first
As early as 1764, Tome Couceiro de Abreu, as royal judge for the

comarca of Porto Seguro, had begun to implementthe Diret6rioin southern
Bahia.34His successor, FranciscoXavier MachadoMonteiro,who served as
ouvidor between 1767 and 1777, went much further in establishing the
system of officially supervisedIndian settlementsin the region. Monteiro,
on his own initiative, modified the royal legislation to adapt it to local
conditions.35 Like the Diret6rio itself, the adaptationshe introducedwere
aimed at creating a stable and productiveIndianpeasantrythrougha com-
bination of coercion, forced culturalassimilation, and close supervision.36
introducedby the Jesuits. But, althoughthe Jesuits attemptedto impose wide-rangingculturalchanges

in the lives of converted Indians, they did not insist that Indians should become "Portuguese." They
were willing to tolerate the existence of christianized"Indians" as a culturallydistinct group within
colonial society. Their tolerance gave way from the late 1750s onwardto a greaterinsistence in Portu-
guese Indianpolicy on culturalconformity.See MoreiraNeto, Indios, pp. 25-26; Jos6 Bessa Freire, "Da
'fala boa' ao portugu6sna Amaz6nia brasileira," Amerindia:Revue d'ethnolinguistiqueamerindienne,
8 (1983), 59-62; and Greg Urban, "The Semiotics of State-IndianLinguistic Relationships: Peru,
Paraguay, and Brazil" in Greg Urban and Joel Sherzer, eds., Nation-States and Indians in Latin
America, (Austin, 1991), p. 323. On the earlier Jesuit mission villages and Jesuit Indian policies, see
Hemming, Red Gold, chaps. 5,10, 13, 15, 18-21; Schwartz, Sugar Plantations, pp. 35-43; and Dauril
Alden, "Black Robes versus White Settlers:The Struggle for the 'freedom of the Indians' in Colonial
Brazil" in Howard Peckham and Charles Gibson, eds., Attitudes of the Colonial Powers Toward
American Indians, (Salt Lake City, Utah, 1969), pp. 19-45.
Despite differences in time and political and cultural context, there are also a number of parallels
between, on the one hand, the system of supervisedaldeias and the Diret6riolegislation more generally
and, on the other, efforts in the U.S. to "civilize" Indians in the late nineteenth century. For U.S.
efforts, see, e.g., RichardWhite, "It's YourMisfortuneand None of My Own": A New History of the
American West (Norman, OK, 1991), pp. 102-04, 109-16.
34 Abreu,
"Relaqio sobre as Villas e Rios ... Porto Seguro" (1764), p. 39.
35 My discussion of the aldeia system in Porto Seguro is based
chiefly on the following sources, all
of which have been publishedin ABN, 32 (1910): Jose Xavier MachadoMonteiro, "Carta ... dirigida
ao Rei" (24 February 1769), 207-208; idem, "Carta . . . dirigida ao Rei," (10 May 1770), 239-40;
idem, "Carta ... dirigidaao Rei" (10 May 1771), 255-57; idem, "Carta ... dirigidaao Rei" (2 April
1772), 266-67; idem, "Relaqio individualdo que tenho feito n'esta Capitaniade Porto Seguro, desde o
dia 3 de maio de 1767" (1 April 1772), 267-69; idem, "Carta..." (April 1773), 272-73; idem, "Carta
. . (paraMartinhode Mello e Castro)" (1 May 1774), 277-78; idem, "Carta ... dirigidaao Rei" (12
May 1775), 293-94; idem, "Carta... (paraMartinhode Mello e Castro)" (1 June 1776), 324-25; idem,
"Relagqo individualdo que o Ouvidorda Capitaniade Porto Seguro n'ella tem operadonos 10 para 11
anos, que tem decorridodesde o dia 3 de maio de 1767" (1777); idem, "Instrucq6esparao governo dos
Indios da Capitaniade PortoSeguro, que meus Directoreshio de praticarem aquilo que nio se encontrar
com o Directorio dos Indios do Gram Pardi"(n.d.), 372-79.
36 In almost any context, use of the term "peasantry" and "peasants" can be problematicif only
because, over the years, the definition of these terms has been the subject of considerablescholarly
debate. See, for example, Sydel Silverman, "The PeasantConceptin Anthropology," Peasant Studies,
7:1 (1979-80), 49-65; Teodor Shanin, ed., Peasants and Peasant Societies: Selected Readings (Har-
mondsworth, Middlx, 1971); FrankEllis, Peasant Economics: Farm Household and Agrarian Devel-
opment (Cambridge, 1988), esp. chap. 1; PierreVilar, Iniciaci6n al vocabulariodel andlisis hist6rico,
trans. M. Dolors Folch (Barcelona, 1980), pp. 267-311; and EduardoArchetti, Egil Fossum, and Per
Olav Reinton, "Agrarian Structureand Peasant Autonomy" (unpublishedpaper, InternationalPeace
Research Institute, Oslo, n.d.).
The issue becomeseven moremore complicatedin dealingwith Brazil, where, as Jos6 de Souza Martins
B. J. BARICKMAN 339
That combinationwas most immediatelyvisible in the aldeias and Indian

towns established in Porto Seguro. To begin, these were nucleated settle-
ments that tied Indiansto a specific identifiableresidence and that thereby
facilitated control over the Indianpopulation.The villages and towns were
notes, "the words 'peasant(campones)' and 'peasantry(campesinato)'are among the most recentin the
Brazilianvocabulary," having been definitively introducedonly in the 1950s. Jose de Souza Martins,Os
camponesese apolitica no Brasil, 3d ed. (Petr6polis,1986), p. 21. Moreover,in the 1950s, 1960s, andeven
early 1970s, a now largelyoutdateddebatequestionedwhetheror not peasantsexist or have ever existed in
Brazil. See, for example, Caio PradoJr., A questdoagrdriano Brasil, 3d ed. (Sdo Paulo, 1981), pp. 15-86.
On the debate, also see StuartB. Schwartz,"Perspectiveson the BrazilianPeasantry:A Review Essay,"
Peasant Studies,4:4 (Oct. 1976), 11-19;andMariaYeddaLinharesandFranciscoCarlosTeixeirada Silva,
Hist6ria da agriculturabrasileira:Combatese controversias(Sio Paulo, 1981), pp. 135-36.
Moving beyond that debate and accepting "peasant" as a useful and valid concept, the more recent
scholarship has yielded in-depth studies of contemporaryBrazilian peasants. See, e.g., Afrnio Raul
Garcia Jr., Terra de trabalho (Rio de Janeiro, 1983); idem, O sul: Caminhodo roqado: Estrategias de
reproduqdocamponesa e transformaqdosocial (Sio Paulo, 1990); Beatriz MariaAlisia de Heredia, A
morada da vida: Trabalhofamiliar de pequenos produtores do Nordeste do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro,
1979); and MargaridaMaria Moura, Os deserdados da terra: A l6gica costumeira e judicial dos
processos de expulsdo e invasdo da terra camponesano sertdo de Minas Gerais (Rio de Janeiro, 1988).
These studies do not take privateownershipof land by individualfarmersor farm families as a necessary
element in defining the peasantriesthey examine; and, while generallynot classifing permanentfull-time
wage-earningrurallaborersas peasants, the studies do not exclude the possibility that peasants may at
times regularlyengage in off-farm labor. Likewise, the recent historicalliteratureon Brazil has begun
to devote increased attention to peasantries in Brazil's past. See, for example, Ciro Flamarion S.
Cardoso, Economia e sociedade em dreas periftiricas: Guiana Francesa e Pard (1750-1817) (Rio de
Janeiro, 1984), pp. 184-87; MariaLuiza Marcflio, Caiqara: Terra e populaqdo:Estudo de demografia
hist6rica e da hist6ria social de Ubatuba (Sio Paulo, 1986); Elizabeth Anne Kuznesof, Household
Economy and Urban Development: Sdo Paulo, 1765-1836 (Boulder, 1986); Hebe Maria Mattos de
Castro, Ao sul da hist6ria (Sio Paulo, 1987); Joio Luis Ribeiro Fragoso, Homens da grossa aventura:
Acumulaqdoe hierarquiana praqa mercantildo Rio de Janeiro (1790-1830) (Rio de Janeiro, 1992), pp.
104-22; Alida C. Metcalf,Family and Froniierin ColonialBrazil:Santanade Parnai'ba(Berkeley, 1992).
Originallydraftedfor the Amazon basin, the Diret6riolegislation containselaborateprovisions on the
distributionof village Indians as laborersfor river-basedexpeditions to gather forest productsand for
other purposes. Directorio, pp. 20-31 in MoreiraNeto, Indios, pp. 185-96. But the sections on farming
within the aldeias refer to the Indians as "possessing" and cultivating "their [own] lands" and sus-
taining themselves and their families with the crops they grew. Ibid., pp. 8, 10, 11, 19, 35.
Entirely coherent with the Diret6rio, the modifications introducedinto that legislation in southern
Bahia, as I attemptto show below, envisioned aldeia Indiansas small-scale, "family"-based, sedentary
agriculturalistswho would enjoy stable access to the land they farmed. It is in this sense that I use the
terms "peasant" and "peasantry" here and elsewhere in this essay. But, as I also attempt to show
below, built into the aldeia system were other goals that conflicteddirectly with the attemptto create an
indigenous peasantry. My use of the terms "peasant" and "peasantry" in the present context would
seem to matchthe similaruse of the same termsby StuartSchwartzandCiro Cardosoin theirdiscussions
of the earlier mission system. See Schwartz, Sugar Plantations, pp. 35-43; and Ciro Flamarion S.
Cardoso, "O trabalhona Col6nia," in Maria Yedda Linhares,ed., Historia geral, p. 85.
The goal of creatingan indigenouspeasantrythat appearsboth in the Diret6rioand in the adaptations
Ouvidor Monteiro made in that legislation has parallels in a certain interest in promoting small-and
medium-scaleagriculturalproductionamong some Brazilianintellectualsin the late colonial period. See
Leopoldo Jobim, Reformaagrdria no Brasil Col6nia (Sio Paulo, 1983); and EmanuelAratijo, Introd-
uqdo to Pensamentospoliticos sobre a Col6nia by Luis dos Santos Vilhena (Rio de Janeiro, 1987), pp.
18-28. Needless to say, that interest did not translateinto policies that transformedpatternsof land-
holding or the structureof Brazilian agriculture.
laid out in straight rows of houses that crossed each other as nearly as
possible at rightangles-all accordingto groundplans thatimposedEuropean
notions of space on the daily lives of Indians.37In the case of largersettle-
ments that rankedas vilas, the rows of houses led towarda centralprava or
squaredominatedby the parishchurch, the casa da cmara (town hall) with
its jail, and a pillory-all symbols of Portugueserule.38
Equally great attentionwas paid to the constructionof houses in those
towns and villages.39 Directors struggledfor years to have Indiansreplace
largepalhogas (thatchhuts) that shelteredseveral couples and their children
with brick and tile houses big enough to accommodatea single couple with
their children. These were to be built following strict guidelines laid out in
Monteiro's "Instruq6espara o governo dos dndios . . . de Porto Seguro
for the governmentof the Indians... of PortoSeguro)":
(Instructions
They [i.e., the houses] shall be at least forty-twopalmas [one palma =
twenty-twocm] in widthandthirtypalmasin depthandshallbe dividedinto
one sala (living or common room) and three bedrooms . . . and [the houses]
shallbe notless thanfourteenandnotmorethanfifteenpalmashighfromthe
groundto theroof,withonlyonedoorfacingthestreet. .. andanotherfacing
thegarden.Ovensforthekitchenshallbe builtin thegardens,nearthehouses,
but far enoughawayto avoidthe dangerof fires.4
Even more so than ground plans for villages and towns, house designs
directly interferedwith the daily lives of Indians. They representeda con-
scious attemptto restructurekinshipand genderrelationsthatcomplemented
detailed regulations concerning marriage and baptism.41The connection
37 See Schwartz, Sugar Plantations, p. 41 (referringto the spatial organizationof Jesuit mission
villages in early colonial Brazil). Also cf. MargaretJolly, "Sacred Spaces: Churches, Men's Houses,
and Households in South Pentecost, Vanatu" in MargaretJolly and MarthaMacIntyre,eds., Family and
Gender in the Pacific: Domestic Contradictionsand the Colonial Impact, (Cambridge, 1989), pp.
213-34.
38 See the four unsigned water-color "maps" of Indianvillages ("Vila do Prado," "Mapa da nova
villa de Portalegre," "Rio Peruipe," and a fourthunnamedvillage) in southernBahia displayed on the
walls of the Sala de Pesquisa at APEB. These undatedfacsimile reproductionsdrawn by Isabel San-
gareau da Fonseca-Lisboa all bear the stamp of the "Arquivo de Marinhae Ultramar. Biblioteca
Nacional," Lisbon. It seems likely that the originals were drawn in the early 1790s by Domingo Alves
Branco Moniz Barreto. Barreto, who was active in southernBahia, preparedin 1794 "maps" of other
Indian villages elsewhere in the captaincy, which are preservedin the Arquivo de Marinhae Ultramar.
See "Planta da Villa de Santarem, pertencenteai comarca dos Ilh6os" (1794), "Planta da Aldea de
Massarandupio"(1794) and "Planta da Villa de Abrantes,pertencenteaicomarcado Norte" (1794) in
ABN, 34 (1912), 328, 330-31.
39 Monteiro's predecessorhad also issued detailed regulationsconcerningthe design of houses. See
Abreu, "Relaqio sobre as Villas e Rios . . . Porto Seguro" (1764), p. 39.
40 Monteiro, "Instrucq6esparao governo dos Indios" (n.d.), p. 379. Also see idem, "Provimentos
e instrucq6es . . . relativos a fundagqoda Villa Vigosa" (1768), ABN, 32 (1910), 212.
41
Cf. Jolly, "Sacred Spaces."
B. J. BARICKMAN 341
with kinship and gender is clear in the section on housing in the "Instruc-
tions for the governmentof Indians," which began with the statementthat
"It is fitting that Indians should live as separatefamilies.'"42 The brick and
tile houses did, indeed, divide Indiansinto family units that met Portuguese
norms and reinforcednotions of Christianmoralityas taughtby parishand
missionary priests. Baltasar da Silva Lisboa, ouvidor for the neighboring
comarca of Ilh6us, expressed a similar concern with residential patterns
when, referringto Indiansunderhis jurisdiction, he wrote: "It must not be
allowed that . . three or four families should live underone roof, where all
witness the perpetrationof acts that naturewishes to hide even in moments
of conjugal modesty.'"43Separatehouses for each "family" preventedthat
possibility while at the same time the internal arrangementof bedrooms
discouragedincest.44
Of course, direct supervisionover the lives Indians led ended when the
doors to these houses were shut. Without actually living with Indians,
directorshad no way to enforce, on a daily basis, regulationsthatprohibited
children over the age of three from sleeping with their parentsin the same
hammockand that orderedIndiansto wear clothes even inside their houses.
Public punishmentlikewise proved ineffective in preventing Indians from
speaking their native languages among themselves instead of Portuguese.
Indians simply took care not to speak their "barbaroustongues" in the
presence of directorsand other officials.45
OuvidorMonteirotried to overcome these difficulties not by dealing with

adult Indians, who, as he put it, would not soon "abandontheirupbringing
and their inclinationtowardalmost congenitaland irreparablevices"; rather
he sought a long-term solution in Indianchildren. "Of all the methods for
civilizing the Indians," he wrote, "none . . . can be so effective as edu-
cating childrenaway from the companyof parents[and]away from the milk
of corruption."'46 Directors had the authorityto compel Indian parents to
send theirchildrento rudimentaryschools wherethey would spend six hours
42 Monteiro, "Instrucq6espara o governo dos Indios" (n.d.), p. 379.

43 Lisboa, "Officio . . . para D. Rodrigo de Sousa Coutinho" (20 March 1799), p. 110.
44 The possibility thatIndiansmight be practicingincest also concernedauthoritiesin the neighboring
comarca of Ilh6us. See Baltasarda Silva Lisboa, "Memoria sobre a comarcados
Ilh6os" (1802), ABN,
37 (1915), 21. In the church records from 1813 for the comarca examined by Luiz Mott, "several
Indians" were accused of incest. Mott, "Os indios," p. 110.
45 On the issue of language, see Freire, "Da 'fala boa,"' pp.59-62; and Urban, "The Semiotics," p.
323.
46 Monteiro, "Carta ... dirigidaao Rei" (24 February1769), p. 207; idem, "Carta ... dirigida ao
Rei" (10 May 1771), p. 255.
a day doing, it seems, little more than listening to spoken Portuguese and
learning Catholic doctrine.47
More widespreadthan schooling no doubt was the practice of assigning
Indian children to the homes of settlers-eitherwhites or "half disguised"
mulattos, but not blacks on the groundsthat they might furthercorruptthe
Indians. Settlers could requestthe services of a male Indian child either as
an apprenticeor as a "wage worker (assalariado)." The child would then
remain with the settler until he reached adulthood and married. For an
apprenticedIndian boy, that meant working only for food and clothing.
Boys hired out as wage workershardlyearnedmuch more. For the first two
years, their employers paid them not in cash, but in clothing. Wages there-
after were set at between Rs.3$000 and Rs.8$000 (three and eight mil-
rdis),48but such rates were merely nominalsince, in practice, employers or
the directors retained the wages and used them-if they were honest-to
purchaseclothing, cows, agriculturalimplements, and tiles (for roofing) for
the boys who had been hiredout. The cows, in turn, were for the time being
kept with cattle belonging either to the employers or to the local directorof
Indians.Much the same arrangementappliedto Indiangirls, whom directors
placed in settlers' homes as domestic servants. By 1773, "to destroy the
almost congenital vices that are passed from father to son," some four
47 At least according the Directorate,Indian

girls and boys would study separatelyin these schools.
The girls would learnto readand write as well as "to weave, to makelace, sewing, andall the othertasks
appropriatefor [their] . . . sex." Directorio, p. 4 in MoreiraNeto, Indios, p. 169. But not is it only
unclearwhethersuch instructionwas given in PortoSeguro;it is also unclearhow many such schools for
either sex were ever established in the region. A petition dating from the 1780s that was purportedly
written by Indians in southernBahia complains about the lack of schools and other educationaloppor-
tunitiesfor aldeia Indians.The petitionis transcribedin Domingos Alves BrancoMoniz Barreto,"Plano
sobre a civilisagqo dos indios do Brazil e principalmentepara a Capitaniada Bahia . . ." (1788),
RIHGB, 19:21 (1856), 91-98 (pp. 96-97 on schooling, etc.). In 1803, settlersin Pradoclaimed, "As for
making lace and sewing, thereare in the country[i.e., township]only four [Indianwomen] who are more
accomplished, and many [who sew and make lace] for their own use." "Informaqio de alguns mora-
dores da villa do Prado ... sobre os Indios" (16 October 1803), p. 180.
48 It is unclear whetherthese rates refer to
monthly or annualwages, but the latteris more likely. A
comparisonof these wage rates with the price of cassava flour in Salvadorprovides a very rough idea
of their value. The average annualprice of an alqueire (bushel) of flour on the Salvadormarketin the
1770s stood at about Rs.$366. Thus, an annualwage of Rs.3$000 would allow for the purchaseof 8.2
alqueires of flour-an amountjust under the 9.125 alqueires that was regardedas a standardannual
ration-, while, with a yearly income of Rs.8$000 from wages, an Indiancould buy almost twenty-two
alqueires of flour or slightly more than the amountneeded to keep himself and anotherperson fed for
entire year. Average price of flour calculated from K[atia] M. de Queir6s Mattoso, "Au Nouveau
Monde: Une Province d'un Nouvel Empire:Bahia au XIXe sidcle" (th6se de doctoratd'etat,
Universit6
de Paris-Sorbonne [Paris IV], 1986), Annexes, pp. 445-61. For the standardannual ration, see B.J.
Barickman,"The Slave Economy of Nineteenth-CenturyBahia:ExportAgricultureand Local Marketin
the Recrncavo, 1780-1860" (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,1991), pp.
118-35.
B. J. BARICKMAN 343
hundred Indian children of both sexes had already been "distributedfor

apprenticeshipsand for paid work in the homes of white and pardo" set-
tlers.49With considerablepride and, no doubt, with some exaggerationas
well, OuvidorMonteiroseldom failed to informthe Crownof the successes
he had achieved by assigning Indianchildrento the homes of settlers:more
and more young male Indians, he claimed, could be seen walking about in
trousersand jackets, and many of them "owned" cattle while Indian girls
who had been farmed out to settlers now regularlywore dresses, blouses,
and earrings.
Monteiroclearly sharedthe obsession with clothing for Indiansthat was
so common among colonial administrators,for whom nudityrepresentedan
affront against Christianmorality.50But Portugueseinsistence that Indians
abandon nudity reflected more than just prudishness. After all, scantily
dressedand sometimes even completely nakedadultslaves could be seen on
the streets of Brazilian cities in the early nineteenthcentury.51And slaves
were not alone: the ouvidor of the neighboring comarca of Ilh6us com-
plained in 1798 that settlers there showed little regardfor clothing. Inside
their houses, even members of town councils in Ilh6us lived "almost na-
ked." The same held true for their wives and daughters."Often one cannot
even look at them because of the indecency with which they show them-
selves." Thomas Lindley, an English merchantand sea captain, who had
the misfortuneto be arrestedin Porto Seguro on a charge of smuggling in
1802, wrote of the jail guards that their "very dress . . . is shocking to a
person of the commonest delicacy."52
Thus, it makes little sense to attributethe obsession with clothing solely
to a concern for propriety and Christianmorality. As Domingos Branco
Alves Moniz Barreto, a militaryofficer with experience in southernBahia,
pointed out, forcing Indians to abandon nudity also had commercial and
fiscal advantages.Moniz Barreto,who took a special interestin the problem
of how to "civilize" Indians, argued in 1788 that Indian purchases of
clothing could "give rise to a great consumptionof clothgoods," which in
turn would rendertrade "more vigorous" and result "in a visible increase
in customs house revenues. 53There could be no betterway to achieve that
"visible increase" than by forcing each and every Indian to wear and,
49 Monteiro, "Carta .. ." (April 1773), p. 272.

50 Hemming, Amazon Frontier, p. 46.
51 Karasch, Slave Life, p. 130; Augel, Visitantes, pp. 204-205.
52 Lisboa, "Officio . .. para D. Rodrigo de Sousa Coutinho" (20 March 1799), p. 107; Lindley,
Narrative, p. 25. Also see Maximiliano, p. 226; and Mott, "Os indios," p. 101.
53 Barreto, "Plano," p. 78.
hence, buy clothing. Accordingly, Monteirohad included in his "Instruc-

tions"a regulation Indianparents
prohibiting fromborrowing
clothingfrom
theirchildren;they would have to purchasetheirown. Parentswho brokethe
regulationcould expect to spend time in the stocks or to have an iron collar
placed aroundtheir neck.54
Like house designs and village groundplans, the removal of Indianchil-
dren from their homes and regulationsconcerningclothing were all part of
a larger project designed, ostensibly, to create a stable and hard-working
Indianpeasantrythat would produceagriculturalstaples for sale and engage
in trade. An emphasis on the "civilizing" virtues of both trade and work,
especially work in agriculture,repeatedlyappearsin the Diret6riolegislation
of 1757-58, which granted directors the authority needed to "persuade
Indians how honorable it . . . [would be] for them to cultivate their
lands."55In Porto Seguro, that meant that each adultIndianmale, working
with his "family," should open a rogado (cleared field) and plant at least
2,000 covas (pits or hollows) of cassava. While the cassava was still rip-
ening in the ground, Indianswere obliged to clear anotherrogado and plant
more cassava. By itself, a field of 2,000 covas of cassava could, with fair
growing conditions, easily provide enoughfarinha to feed a family of six
during an entire year. Planting two such fields would yield a marketable
surplus.56
Monteiro's "Instructions" also requiredIndians to plant in and around
their rogados fruit trees, bananas, beans, maize, and rice as well as cotton
and, if at all possible, other export crops such as coffee and cocoa. The
"Instructions,"however, prohibitedthem from cultivatingsugar-canesince
its juice could be easily fermentedand used to strengthencauim, an alco-
holic beveragemade from cassava. Directorswere, therefore,orderedto cut
down any cane they found in Indian fields and also to seize and destroy
molinetes (simple hand-drivenmills for grindingcane). Drunkennesscould
only interferewith field work and with the commercialproductionof agri-
culturalstaples.
In an arrangementbroadly similar to the reparto de mercancias used in
colonial Spanish America, responsibilityfor marketingthose staples rested
in the hands of the directors, who as a result also controlled the income
earnedfrom the sale of Indianproduce. In principle, afterthe tithe had been
paid and after the director had deducted his sixth as a commission, the
54 Iron collars were also a common means of punishingrunawayslaves. Karasch,Slave Life, p. 316.
55Directorio, p. 8 in MoreiraNeto, p. 173.
56 See the discussion of cassava yields in Barickman, "The Slave
Economy," pp. 451-55.
B. J. BARICKMAN 345
income went toward the purchaseof goods that, in the director's opinion,
Indians lacked and needed: first, olive oil, salt, and tobacco; second, im-
plements such as hoes, axes, and scythes; and, third, clothing for daily use
and for holidays. Any remainingincome would be appliedtowardproviding
Indians with tiles (to roof their houses), furniture,and cattle. Here too the
goal of forced acculturationmixed with commercialinterests, overridingat
the same time any considerationabout whetherIndians actually wanted to
use tobacco or to cook with olive oil. Like the cloth, salt, and iron goods
purchasedby directorson the Indians'behalf, olive oil for forced sale to the
Indianshad to be importedfrom Portugal.
The directorsposted in each village or settlement were responsible not

only for the sale of Indian produce, but also for making the labor of adult
Indiansavailable to settlers. In distributingIndianworkers "for daily wage
labor for whites and pardos, either on land or at sea," directors were in-
structedto select first "Indians in whom the abominablesin of sloth is so
engrained. . thatno matterhow often they are orderedto do so they never
plant enough cassava" and second those Indians who were merely "less
lazy." Likewise, Indians who did "not bear themselves and dress as
whites" were, along with women accused of prostitution,also subject to
forced wage labor.57Above and beyond work in theirown fields and on the
farms of settlers, Indianscould also expect to be draftedfor (unpaid?)labor
on public projects such as road-building.
All in all, as applied in Porto Seguro in the late eighteenth century, the
system of officially supervisedvillages amountedto a sweeping and ambi-
tious project to transformthe region's populationof indios mansos into a
stable and productive peasantry that, over time, would lose its distinct
culturalidentity and that would immediatelycontributeto the development
of a strong commercial economy in southernBahia. The project was not
only ambitious;it was also fundamentallyflawed by contradictoryand con-
flicting goals. Although authoritiessoon recognizedsome of the flaws, they
would continue to rely on one or anotherversion of the system throughout
the entire nineteenthcentury.58Officially supervisedvillages had provedfar
57 Monteiro, "Instrucq6espara o governo dos Indios" (n.d.), pp. 374, 377. Although the "Instruc-
tions" do not establishfixed wage rates, they do use the terms " jornal" and "soldada," indicatingthat,
at least in principle, the Indians distributedby directors would receive wages. Hence, here and else-
where, I have used the expression "forced wage labor" to describe work done by Indians under these
arrangements.It is of course entirely possible that some or perhaps even most settlers failed to pay
wages.
58 The operation of officially supervised villages in nineteenth-centuryBahia remains an unstudied
topic. See, however, Hildete da Costa D6ria, "Localizagqodas aldeias e contingentedemograificodas
too useful in controllingthe Indianpopulationand in promotingsettlement

to be discarded.
In part, as the FrenchtravellerAuguste de Saint-Hilairenoted in the early

nineteenthcentury, the flaws in the system derived from the Diret6rio leg-
islation itself, which gave extensive powers to the directorsposted in Indian
villages and settlements. "Pombal," Saint-Hilairewrote, "[had] wanted
directorswho were reasonablebeings. Those who were given to the Indians
were immoral, greedy men, often fugitives from justice, and they became
horrible despots."59 Domingos Alves Branco Moniz Barreto had earlier
confirmed Saint-Hilaire'sassessment when, in 1788, he described the di-
rectors in southern Bahia as, in general, poor and uneducatedmen who,
"instead of teaching the Indianswhat little they know about reading, writ-
ing, counting, and Christiandoctrine, care only about setting themselves up
as planterson the best sites and . . using the same Indiansfor work on their
crops . . withoutany expenditureon wages."60 A petitionaddressedto the
Queen and purportedlywritten by Bahian Indians in the late 1780s made
similar claims: "They [the directors]make us work more than we should
and harderthanour strengthallows, caringmore for theirprofitsthanfor our
welfare, fortune, and survival." The Indianswent on to complain that they
had become virtualslaves to theirdirectorsand to the priestsassigned to care
for their spiritualneeds.61
populaq6esindigenasda Bahia entre 1850 e 1882," Cultura(Salvador,BA), 1:1 (1988), 81-92. Also see
the decrees and laws dealing with Indianvillages in Bahiafrom 1827, 1836, 1875 transcribedin Manuela
Carneiroda Cunha(ed.), Legislagdo indigenistano sdculoXIX: Uma compilagdo(Sdo Paulo, 1992), pp.
129-30, 168-69, 282-86. More generally, see Hemming,AmazonFrontier, chap. 4 andpassim;Carneiro
da Cunha, "Polftica indigenista," pp. 133-54; ElizabethMariaBeserraCoelho, A politica indigenistano
Maranhdoprovincial (Sdo Luis, 1990), which is currentlythe most detailed discussion of nineteenth-
century Indian policy for any Northeasternprovince; and Karasch, "Catequese," pp. 404-11.
The Directorateitself was revoked in 1798. Although the issue of how best to deal with Indians
repeatedlycame up after 1798, no generallegislation on the matterwould be approveduntil 1845, when
the Brazilian parliamentestablished new national guidelines, all in all quite similar to those of the
Directorate,for the administrationof officially supervisedaldeias. In practice, the main featuresof the
Directorateseem to have remainedin effect duringthe years between 1798 and 1845. Carneiroda Cunha
points out that, in the nineteenthcentury, the "Indian question" became fundamentallya "land prob-
lem." "Politica indigenista," pp. 133-54, esp. pp. 134, 138-40. Not surprisingly then, the legal
"vacuum" on Indianmattersbetween 1798 and 1845 is strikinglysimilarto the absoluteabsence of any
legislation regulatingthe acquisitionof land in the public domain in Brazil between 1823 and 1850. On
land legislation and the lack thereof, see Jos6 Murilo de Carvalho, Teatro de sombras: A politica
imperial (Sdo Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, 1988), chap. 3.
59 Auguste de Saint-Hilaire,Voyagedans les districtsdes diamans et sur le littoral du Bresil, 2 vols.
(Paris, 1833), 2, p. 6. Also see Hemming, Amazon Frontier, chap. 3.
60 Barreto, "Plano," p. 67.
61 The petition is transcribedin ibid., pp. 91-98
(p. 93 for quotation).
B. J. BARICKMAN 347
It would, however, be misleadingto focus only on the personalcharacter

of the men appointedas directorsof Indians.Even if most of them had been
honest, well-intentioned, and thoroughlyaltruistic,they would have had to
deal with the contradictionsbuilt into the system of supervised villages,
beginning with the villages themselves. Close political, economic, and cul-
tural control over Indians requiredthe creation of fixed nucleated settle-
ments where directorscould supervisetheir daily lives. Villages of this sort
might have made sense in an area of intensive farming, but not in a region
where even Portuguese-speakingsettlers relied on shifting slash-and-bum
agriculture with long fallow periods. Settlers and Indians alike in Porto
Seguro reportedlyharvested only two successive crops of cassava from a
field before moving on and clearing new land.62Shifting agriculturewas
much more compatibleeither with a scatteredpatternof settlementor with
the easily relocated semi-permanentthatch villages in which the Tupi-
speaking Indiansof coastal Brazil had traditionallylived. And, indeed, the
"tame" Indians of southernBahia lived most of the time not in the neat
rectangularhouses with tiled roofs that they were forced to build in the
villages, but ratherin thatchhuts in the fields outside the villages.63When
the German traveller and naturalistPrince Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied
visited the Indian town of Trancoso in 1816, he found it virtually empty:
"the inhabitantslive on their farms (roqas) and come to Churchand hence
into town only on Sundays and on feast days.'"64
The Diret6riolegislation and the adaptationsintroducedby OuvidorMon-

teiro assumedthat, workingon those farms, Indianfamilies would gradually
become a productive, prosperous, and-over time-thoroughly acculturated
peasantry.Residential patternswould, in turn, restructurekinship relations
and help create stable, hard-working,monogamouspeasant families. That
goal, however, conflicted both with efforts to accelerate acculturationand
62
[Aires de Casal], 2, p. 83. The agriculturalpractices followed by both settlers and Indians in
southern Bahia (two successive harvests of cassava, clearings every two years, and a long fallowing
period) should not be takenas an indicationthat the soils in the region were unproductive.EsterBoserup
has convincingly arguedthat, where land is plentiful in relationto population, such practicescan result
in largeryields with a minimumof laborinput. EsterBoserup, Evoluqdoagrdria e pressdo demogrdfica,
trans. OriowaldoQueda and Jodo CarlosDuarte(Sdo Paulo, 1987). Moreover,variantson this extensive
pattern of land use, which can be ecologically sound, have been the rule rather than exception in
Brazilian agricultureuntil recent times. See Leo Waibel, Capitulos de geografia tropical, 2d ed.,
annotated(Rio de Janeiro, 1979); Susanna Hecht and Alexander Cockburn, The Fate of the Forest:
Developers, Destroyers and Defenders of the Amazon (New York, 1990), pp. 44-47.
63 Monteiro,
"Instrucq6espara o governo dos Indios" (n.d.), p. 373. Also see idem, "Provimentos
e instrucq6es . . . relativos a fundagqoda Villa Vigosa" (1768), pp. 213-14.
64 Maximiliano, p. 233. Also see ibid., p. 227-28.
with the need to supply settlers with Indian labor. The forced removal of
severalhundredIndianchildrenrobbedIndianhouseholdsof laborneeded to
produce marketablesurpluses of cassava and other crops and thereby un-
derminedthe developmentof a stable and prosperousindigenouspeasantry.
Even more damaging, no doubt, was the distributionof adult Indians as

wage workers.Althoughno sourcepermitsan estimateof how many Indians
were at any given time employed either by settlers in logging, agriculture,
and fishing or by local authoritieson public works, Ouvidor Monteiro's
"Instructions"allowed directorsto compel almost any Indianinto accepting
wage work. DirectorsprovidedIndianworkersto settlers as well as for the
private use of royal officials. Thus, in 1816, Ouvidor Jose Marcelino da
Cunhaemployed at his FazendaPonte do Gentio "Indianfamilies" as well
as black slaves, immigrants from the Azores, and nine Chinese coolies
originally broughtto Brazil to cultivate tea-all of whom took ordersfrom a
Portuguese-bornfeitor (overseer). Nearby, the Count of Barca, a minister
within the Prince Regent's government,had twenty-fourIndiansat his ser-
vice at Morro de Araraon the River Mucuri, where they worked clearing
land for a plantationand felling timber for a sawmill.65
Moreover, an 1820 census of the township of Sio Mateus suggests that

forced wage work could, in practice, easily approximatea form of slavery.
The census divides Indians into two categories: "indios livres do jornal"
and "indios cativos do jornal"-that is, Indians who were "free from
wages" and those who were "captive wage workers." The "captive"
workersaccountedfor nearly a fifth (19.6 percent)of the township's Indian
population. The distinctionbetween "wage captivity" and slavery seems at
best ambiguous since the same census also uses the term "cativo" to des-
ignate black slaves and since among the "captive" Indians were boys and
girls under the age of five-presumably the children of adult Indians who
were "captive wage workers.'"66Even within the aldeias, work at times
65 Ibid., pp. 182, 191.

66 "Mappa dos Habitantesque existem na Parochia da Villa de Sdo Matheus ..." (1819-20) in
"Mapas estatisticos da comarca de Porto Seguro," BN-s/m, 1-31,19,15. The census itself provides no
furtherinformationon the statusof the Indiansit classifies underthe categories " (ndioslivres dojornal"
and "indios cativos do jornal, " which do not appearelsewhere in the documentationexamined for this
study. In principle, therefore, it would be possible to interpretthe two categories as referring,respec-
tively, to "free Indians" who received day wages and to "captive" (that is, captured)Indians who
received day wages. The "captive" Indians might then be those taken as prisonersof war and legally
enslaved under the 1808 decree reinstatingIndian slavery in Bahia, Espirito Santo, and Minas Gerais.
(See below.) But at least three considerationsweigh against that interpretation.First, it is unlikely that
absolutelyall Indiansliving underPortugueserule in the townshipof Sdo Mateusworkedfor settlersand
that none of them cultivated their own crops. There were at least two Indian villages in the township
B. J. BARICKMAN 349
bore little resemblance to farming by a free peasantry. Ouvidor Monteiro

admittedas much when, in 1771, he reportedthat, for field work, he had
had to resortto the gang system, dividing Indiansinto "squads governedby
[Indian]overseers (cabos).'"67
Finally, authoritiesfreely uprootedfamilies of settled Indians,using them

to establish new aldeias at strategicpoints where they could defend settlers
againstattacksby hostile Indiansand where they would be availableto ferry
travellersacross rivers.68The possibility that they might at any moment be
forced to move hardly encouragedIndiansto invest the time and energy in
agricultureneeded to harvestmarketablesurpluses. It certainlydiscouraged
them from cultivating permanentexport crops such as coffee. Indeed, no
sooner had Indians at Olivenqa in southernIlheus begun to harvest coffee
from the groves they had plantedthanthey found settlersattemptingto force
them off their land.69Aldeias in effect served to open new areas to settle-
ment by Portuguese-speakingBraziliansand allowed settlersto seize Indian
lands in areas already under Portuguesecontrol.
Ouvidor Monteiro finally left Porto Seguro in 1777 after a decade-long

effort to impose rigid control on the region's populationof settled Indians.
Although some of his policies would lapse in later years, they were crucial
in firmly establishing the aldeia system in southernBahia. Even as late as
1803, settlers in the township of Prado still rememberedMonteiro and his
"good government(boa regincia) . .. that firmly held [the Indians]under
the yoke."70 The settlers had sound reasons for praising Monteiro. The
system of supervisedIndianvillages had not only made Indianlabor avail-
able to them, but also opened the way both for furthersettlement and for
expandedtradein the comarca. By 1820, with a populationthat now stood
(Santana and Santo Ant6nio de Lagoinhas). Maximiliano, p. 166; Rebello, "Corographia," p. 194.
Second, the "indios livres do jornal" includedyoung childrenunderthe age of five, who could not have
possibly been wage-earninglaborers. It is very unlikely that settlers would have paid Indian children
underthe age of five wages for whateverwork they might have performed.Third, the 1808 decree that
legally reinstated the enslavement of Indians captured in wars against the Botocudo did not require
payments of wages to Indians so enslaved. The text of the decree can be found in Carneiroda Cunha
(ed.), LegislaCdoindigenista, pp. 57-60. Nevertheless, it would not be at all impossible that the census
may have classified some Indians enslaved under the 1808 decree as "indios cativos do jornal."
67
Monteiro, "Carta ... dirigida ao Rei" (10 April 1771), p. 255.
68
Monteiro, "Carta ... dirigida ao Rei" (24 February1769), p. 207; idem, "Relagqo individual"
(1 April 1772), p. 267; idem, "RelaSqo individual" (1777), p. 371; Maximiliano, pp. 173, 220, 220,
228.
69
"Representagqodos Indios moradoresno Rio Negro, ou Una, Termo da Comarca dos Ilh6os"
(1818), APEB, SH, 238.
70 "Informagqode alguns moradoresda villa do Prado ... sobre os indios" (16 October 1803), p.
180.
at over 16,000, Porto Seguro was shippingover 140,000 alqueires (bushels)

of cassava flour a year to Salvador,Recife, Rio de Janeiro,and othercoastal
cities.71
That flour, however, came overwhelmingly from the farms of Portu-

guese-speaking settlers. The system of officially supervised villages had
failed to create the stable and prosperousIndianpeasantryin southernBahia
foreseen in the 1757-58 Diret6rio legislation. As the trade in cassava flour
grew, settlersincreasinglydisplacedIndians.Thatprocess acceleratedin the
early nineteenthcenturywith the growthof Salvador'surbanmarket.At the
same time, the rapidly expanding city of Rio de Janeiro emerged as an
alternativemarket for flour from the region especially after 1808 when a
royal decree legalized direct trade between Porto Seguro and Rio.72 Trav-
elling through the comarca in 1808, Luis TomaisNavarrode Campos de-
scribed the township of Prado as "inhabited by Indians" and referredto
Alcobaqa and Portalegreas "vilas de indios"-"Indian towns." By 1820,
settlers and slaves would, in the three townships, outnumberIndiansthree
to one.73 In only two of the comarca's nine townships, Vila Verde and
Trancoso, did Indians still account for the majorityof the population. (See
table 1, above.) Neither produceda significant surplusof cassava flour for
sale in Brazilian markets.74The same held true for Indian farmers in the
township of Vila Viqosa, which, between 1817 and 1820, exportedroughly
26,000 alqueires of flour a year to marketselsewhere in Brazil. An 1820
survey listed, for Vila Viqosa, 115 cassava growers, of whom only nineteen
were classified as "Indians." The Indianfarmersproduced,on average,just
under seventy alqueires each against an average of 200 alqueires for Por-
tuguese-speakingcassava growers in the same township.75
71 See note 74 below.

72
Aviso r6gio of 7 December 1808, a copy of which is enclosed in Miguel Gonqalvesda Silva Santos
(pres., Cimara de Caravelas) to the Pres. of the Prov., 26 April 1827, APEB, SH, 4631; Brown,
"InternalCommerce," pp. 350-53.
73 Campos, "Itinerario," pp. 433, 444, 450; and, for populationca. 1820, table 1 above.
Similarly,
in a reportfrom the late 1780s on troop strengthin the first-andsecond-line militia, Vila Viqosa as well
as Alcobaqa, Prado, and Portalegrewere all classified as "vilas de indios." "Observaqio relativa aos
corpos auxiliarese ordenanqasda Capitaniada Bahia, que regulou o Governadore Capitio-GeneralD.
FernandoJos6 de Portugal" (1787), ABN, 34 (1912), 225. By 1820, Indianswould accountfor less than
a fourth of the populationof Vila Viqosa.
74 In 1819, shipments of farinha from Trancoso and Vila Verde amountedto 560
alqueires or 9.5
percentof total production.In that same year, the quantityoffarinha shippedfrom Caravelas,Alcobaqa,
Vila Viqosa, Prado, and Sio Mateus surpassed 140,000 alqueires (69.4 percent of total productionin
those five townships). "Mapas estatisticos da comarca de Porto Seguro," BN-s/m, 1-31,19,15.
75 "Mappa comparativodas Mandiocas, e Alqueiresde farinhas,que se fizerio na Parochiada Villa
Viqoza ... no an' de 1820" in "Mapas estatisticosda comarcade Porto Seguro," BN-s/m, 1-31,19,15.
B. J. BARICKMAN 351
Althoughthey lacked the power to halt the flow of settlersinto the region,
the "tame" Indians of Porto Seguro did not passively accept the project
elaboratedfor them by the Crown and local authorities.They had neither
disappearedas a distinct cultural group nor become peasant farmers who
marketed large surpluses of agriculturalproduce and thereby contributed
both to the growth of trade and to royal revenues. They survived often, it
seems, in wretchedpovertyand certainlynot on theirown terms. One might
reasonably ask whether settled Indians in southern Bahia could not have
achieved a larger measure of economic well-being and power within colo-
nial society by participatingmore actively and more directly in commercial
agricultureand trade. But the question ignores the conflicting and contra-
dictorygoals that were built into the entirealdeia system as appliedin Porto
Seguro and that effectively limited the options open to the region's popu-
lation of "tame" Indians. A prosperous and economically secure Indian
peasantry that sold large quantities of cassava flour in colonial markets
would not, in the end, have been compatiblewith settler demandsfor both
land and Indianlabor. Yet, despite impoverishmentand marginalization,the
settled Indians of Porto Seguro nevertheless survived. By itself, their sur-
vival points to an undercurrentof resistancethat is difficult to chart in the
available sources, which refer only vaguely to the widespreadproblem of
Indians' fleeing from officially supervisedvillages and to bouts of drunk-
enness.76
III
For both colonial authorities and settlers, drunkennessand the flight of

"tame" Indians from villages must have seemed little more than minor
problems compared to the often fierce resistance of the so-called gentio
bravo or "wild heathens" who, in the late eighteenth century, retained
control over a large partof the comarca. The Portugueseused more than a
dozen names in referringto the unconqueredIndianswho inhabitedthe hills
and rivervalleys of southernBahia. The large numberof names points to the
considerableethnic variety and complexity that characterizedthis stretchof
76 See, for example, Monteiro, "Carta ... (paraMartinhode Mello e Castro)," (1 May 1774), p.
277; "Informaqgode alguns moradoresda villa do Prado,dirigidaao OuvidorFranciscoDantasBarbosa,
sobre os indios" (16 October 1803), p. 180. I have been unable to locate evidence recordingany act of
resistance in Porto Seguro comparableto the 1784 "sublevaqio da Ilha do Quiepe," an uprising that
involved the collective flight of some 900 Indiansfrom at least threealdeias in the comarca of Ilh6usand
that lasted seven years. See Mott, "Os indios," pp. 114-16. Yet, Mott's recentdiscovery of this uprising
points to the possibility that future researchmay bring to light similar incidents in Porto Seguro.
coastalBrazil.Ethnohistoricalknowledgeis, however,atpresentsimplytoo
in
scantto sortout any detailthatcomplexityor to ruleout the possibility
thatethnicboundariesmay have shiftedover time as some groupsmerged
or dividedto formnew groups.Yet, despitediversityanddespitewhatmay
havebeen shiftingethnicboundaries,mostandperhapseven all the uncon-
queredIndiansin southernBahiabelongedto one of fourmaingroups:the
Camaca(orMongoi6),theMaxacali,thePatax6,andtheBotocudo.All four
groupswereGe-speakers,buttheydifferedsignificantlyin theirsubsistence
strategies.Thus, while the Camacdandthe Maxacalipracticedsome agri-
culture,thePatax6andthe Botocudo,by contrast,subsistedalmostentirely
on the gameandfish they caughtandon the wild fruitthey gathered.77
Settlersin PortoSeguroapparently hadonly sporadicandlimitedcontact
with these Indiansbeforethe 1780s. On arrivingin the comarcain 1764,
OuvidorTome Couceirode Abreuhad ordereda supplyof trinketsto be
used in luringinto Portuguese-controlled aldeiasthe unconquered Indians
who lived nearSao Mateusin the southernmost partof the comarca.78But
thereis no evidencethatthe redcaps, knives,mirrors,andclothgoodsever
persuadeda significantnumberof Indiansto acceptlife underPortuguese
rule.A decadelater,Couceirode Abreu'ssuccessorreportedthatno "hea-
thens"had "comedown" andthathe couldfindno one willingto takeup
the taskof "catechizing"them.79Indirectly,the creationof new aldeiasat
strategicpointsalong the coast and the clearingof forestaroundalready
establishedsettlementstestifyto the continuingproblemof occasionalraids
againstsettlementsby hostile Indians.Yet informationon these raids is
scant.It seemsthat,duringtheseyears,thePortuguese-speaking residentsof
PortoSeguroon the whole avoidedcontactwith unconquered Indiansand
seldomventuredfar fromthe relativesafetyof theirtowns and farms.In
1764, OuvidorCouceirode AbreuinformedtheCrownthatsettlersin Porto
Segurobelievedthatit wouldbe absolutelypointlessto builda roadalong
the coastpassingthroughareas"coveredwithheathensof an evil nature."
"No traveller,"he added,"woulddareuse a roadwiththeevidentdangers
77 On these Indians, see notes 27-29 above.

78 Abreu, "Officio . . . (para o Ministro de Negocios do UltramarFrancisco Xavier de
Mendonqa
Furtado)"(15 June 1764), p. 51. These may have been the partiallysubjugatedMaxacalis and Maconis
(a group related to the Patax6) who had fled inland in 1758. By the late eighteenthand early nineteenth
centuries, there are reportsof a large numberof unconqueredIndiansliving in the area who maintained
peaceful relations with Portuguesebackwoodsmen. Barreto, "Plano," p. 65; "Carta do Vigario geral
... do Arraial de Agua Suja de Minas Novas" (24 February1794), pp. 314-15; Maximiliano, pp.
174-75.
79 Monteiro, "Carta ... dirigida ao Rei" (12 April 1775), p. 293.
B. J. BARICKMAN 353
to his life, and, withoutcontinuedtraffic, any roadin this Americais, within

three years' time, once again covered with forest.'"'8
Contact with groups of still unconqueredIndiansbecame more common
from the 1780s onwardin large part as a result of the growth of settlement
in Porto Seguro. As more and more settlersopened clearingsin the forest to
establish homesteads and to plant cassava, an increase in contact with In-
dians was almost inevitable.
But perhapseven more importantin explaining the increase in contact as
well the often violent nature of that contact were Portuguese attempts to
build a transportationnetworkthat would directlylink the coastal comarcas
of Porto Seguro and Ilh6us with the backlandsof Bahia and with towns and
mining camps in the neighboringcaptaincyof MinasGerais. Royal officials,
local authorities, and backwoodsmenbecame convinced that the construc-
tion of new roads and the removal of obstacles to river traffic could open
vast new opportunitiesfor local and long-distance trade, which, in turn,
would encouragefurthersettlement.The commoditiesthat were expected to
fuel this tradeincluded timber, salt, cattle, saltpeter,and especially cotton,
which by the 1790s rankedas Brazil's second most valuable export.81Cot-
ton grew well in bottom lands along the rivers that cut across the Bahian
backlands and just as well, if not better, in eastern Minas Gerais. By the
early nineteenthcentury,Minas Novas and othertownshipsin easternMinas
Gerais had emerged as importantcenters of cotton production. Farmersin
Minas Gerais also produceda wide variety of foodstuffs for local markets.
Yet most of Minas' tradewith the rest of the world was channelledthrough
Rio de Janeiro, entirely bypassing Bahian ports.82
Often relying on the labor of "tame" Indians, royal officials, local au-
thorities, and backwoodsmen made repeated attempts between 1780 and
80 Abreu, "RelaqIo" (8 January1764), p. 42.

81 Manuel da CunhaMenezes, "Officio ... paraMartinhode Mello e Castro, sobre a Capitaniados
Ilheos" (12 October 1780), ABN, 32 (1910), 472-73; Jos6 de Sai Bittencourt [e Accioli], "Memoria
sobre a plantaqio dos algodoens, sua exportaqIoe decadenciada Lavourade Mandioca, no Termo da
Villa de Camamu" [1796], Anais do ArquivoPaiblicodo Estado da Bahia, 14 (1925), pp. 51-63; idem,
"Carta ... para D. FernandoJos6 de Portugal" (7 October 1796), ABN, 36 (1914), 14; Silva, A
primeira gazeta, pp. 49-71.
For the value of cotton exports between 1796 and 1811, Jose Jobson de A. Arruda, O Brasil no
comercio colonial (Sio Paulo, 1980), p. 353-54.
82 RobertoB. Martins, "A induistriatextil dom6sticade Minas Gerais no s6culo XIX" (CEDEPLAR,
Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, unpublishedpaper, n.d.), pp. 1-2, cited by
permissionof the author;Brown, pp. 462-506; Alcir Lenharo,As tropasda moderagdo(0 abastecimento
da Corte na forma?do polftica do Brasil-1808-1842) (Sdo Paulo, 1979), chaps. I-IV.
1820 to divert part of that trade toward Bahia and at the same time to
improve communicationsbetween the interiorand the coast. (See table 2.)
Small flotillas of canoes laden with cotton and other commodities for the
firsttimeattempted riverstothecoast.Newroads,
todescendquick-flowing
cattle drives, and exploratoryexpeditions now crossed territorywhere be-
fore the Portuguese-speakingBrazilians had seldom dared to venture. In
effect, Portugueseefforts to penetratethe interiorencircledthe Indians.The
result was an increase in contact with Indians that in turn led to greater
conflict between settlers and Indians and also, it seems, between different
groups of Indians as pressurenow came at them from all directions.
Once again, wherever possible, the Indians were to be fully "domesti-
cated" by being placed in officially supervisedvillages, where they would
practice settled agricultureand where their labor would be available to
settlers. Yet the success of this culturallydestructive,but nonetheless com-
paratively peaceful strategy for dealing with the Indians hinged on the
Indiansthemselves, on the possibilities for response built into their ways of
life, and, closely related, on the choices they made.
The first group of Indiansforced to make such choices were the Camacd
who lived between the Rio Pardoand the Rio de Contas. Sometime around
1780, the Portuguese-bornbackwoodsmanand veteran Indian-fighterJoao
Gonqalvesda Costa set out with fifty "civilized Indians" and a large quan-
tity of ammunitionto conquerthe Camacaand to complete work on a road
linking the sertdo (backlands)with the coast of Ilh6us. Althoughthe details
are unclear, by 1782, Costa had convinced 2,000 Camacdsin five villages
to agree to their own "subjectionand reduction"to Portugueserule in large
part, it seems, because the Camacas sought protection from raids by the
nomadic Patax6 and Botocudo. Costa was, by 1804, regularly sending
Camacdsto the coast to work in cutting timber for the Crown. Two years
later, he "conquered" another group of Camacds on the Rio Pardo who
were again willing to accept Portugueseprotectionfrom the Botocudo and
the Patax6. As in the 1780s, official aldeias with directorsappointedby the
colonial governmentwere establishedfor the Camacas.83
83 Manuel da CunhaMenezes, "Officio ... paraMartinhode Mello e Castro, sobre a Capitania dos
Ilhdos" (12 August 1780), pp. 472-73; "Officio dos Governadoresinterinosda Capitaniada Bahia para
Martinhode Mello e Castro, em que Ihe ddo diversas ... noticias relativasa'comarcados Ilh6os" (23
Aug. 1783), ABN, 32 (1910), 539-40; "Portariado GovernadorMarquezde Valenqa, em que manda
fundaruma aldeia de indios no sitio do Funil do Rio de Contas" (23 February1782), ABN, 32 (1910),
540; FranciscoNunes da Costa, "Officio ... parao Governointerinoda Bahia" (6 August 1783), ABN,
32 (1910), 541; Costa, "Memoria summariae compendiosada Conquistado Rio Pardo" (1806-1807),
pp. 455-58; Hemming, Amazon Frontier, pp. 88-90.
TABLE2
ATTEMPTS TO IMPROVE COMMUNICATIONS BETWEEN THE COAST AND

THE INTERIOR IN SOUTHERN BAHIA, 1777-1818.
Years Observations
1777-80 Road built following the Rio de Contas from the upper
reaches of the Rio Pardo, near the borderwith
Minas Gerais, to the coast in southernIlh6us.
1793-1803 Road built between the coastal town of Camamuin
Ilh6us and the upperreaches of the Rio Pardo, near
the borderwith Minas Gerais.
1800 Official opening of the Rio Doce for navigation from
the coast to Minas Gerais.
1804 Expeditionon the Rio Jequitinhonha (also known as the
Rio Grandede Belmonte)as far as Minas Geraisto
determinewhetherit could be openedfor navigation.
1806-07 Expedition along the Rio Pardo to determinewhether it
could be opened for navigation.
1810-14 Road built from the town of Ilh6us to the upper
reaches of the Rio Pardo.
1811-13 Road built along the Rio Jequitinhonhabetween the
coastal town of Belmonte in Porto Seguro and the
town of Minas Novas in Minas Gerais.
1816 Followinga successfulexpeditiondown the Rio Mecuri,
the startof constructionof a roadalong the river
between the coastaltown of Portalegrein PortoSeguro
and the town of Minas Novas in Minas Gerais.
1816-18 Road built betweenVit6riaon the coast of the captaincy
of EspiritoSanto and OuroPretoin Minas Gerais.
Sources: Manuel da Cunha Menezes, "Officio ... para Martinhode Mello e Castro, sobre a Cap-
itania dos Ilh'os" (12 Aug. 1780), pp. 473-75; "Officio dos Governadoresinterinosda Capitaniada
Bahia para Martinhode Mello e Castro, em que ihe dio diversas . . . noticias relativasa comarcados
Ilh6os" (23 Aug. 1783), ABN, 32 (1910), pp. 539-40; Jose da SaiBittencourte Accioli, "Carta... para
D. FernandoJose de Portugal" (7 Oct. 1796), ABN, 36 (1914), p. 14; idem, "Carta .. . para D.
Rodrigo de Sousa Coutinho,em que o informasobreos trabalhosda nova estrada"(20 May 1801), ABN,
36 (1914), p. 403; idem, "Carta ... para o Governadorda Bahia" (14 Oct. 1803), ABN, 37 (1915),
pp. 148-49; "Officio do Governadorda Capitaniado EspiritoSanto ... parao Governadorda Bahia"
(16/11/1800), ABN, 36 (1914), pp. 293-94; "Cartado Governadorda Capitaniado EspiritoSanto ...
para a firma Gomes & Mello, em que lhe di parte da aberturado Rio Doce" (5/11/1800), ABN, 36
(1914), p. 298; "Memoria sobre a aberturado Rio Doce, e sua navega o . .. e ExtraCqodas Madras
ao Long delle .. ." [1804?], APEB, SH, 585; Jododa Silva Santos, "Descripqgodiariado Rio Grande
do Belmonte, desde o Porto grande desta villa at6 o fim delle ou divisdo de Villa Rica" (1804), ABN,
37 (1915), pp. 248-72; Costa, "Memoria summariae compendiosada Conquistado Rio Pardo" (1806-
1807), pp. 455-59; Silva, pp. 49-52; [Jododa] Silva Campos, Cr6nica da Capitania de Sdo Jorge dos
Ilheus, edigqo comemorativade sua elevagqo a categoria de Cidade (Rio de Janeiro, 1981), p. 193;
Maximiliano, pp. 174-76, 186-87; Jose JoaquimMachadode Oliveira, "Notas, apontamentose noticias
para a historia da provincia do Espirito Santo," RIHGB, 19 (1856), 189-92, 301-313.
Prince Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied, who visited some of Costa's Ca-

maci villages in 1817, observedthat the recent increasein Portuguese
settlementin the areawas placingever greaterpressureon these Indians,
who lived "together in small 'rancherias' or villages," where they culti-
vated maize, cotton, and bananasand continuedto hunt wild game. Wied-
Neuwiedwenton to notethat,supervisedby directorswho werethemselves
"uncultured men, . . . the poor Indians are tyrannized and treated like
slaves, forced to work on roads and in clearing the forest, orderedto carry
messages over long distances, and drafted to serve against enemy Indi-
ans."'84
The Maxacalirespondedsimilarlyto the combinationof pressurefrom the
Portugueseand raids by other Indians. In 1786, a group of 120 came out of
the forests near Portalegredeclaringtheirfriendly intentionsand requesting
"iron cutting tools to make arms to defend themselves against two enemy
nations, the Patax6 and Botocudo, with whom they sustain an implacable
war."85 Another group of over 200 Maxacalis left the forests a few years
later, again seeking Portugueseprotection. The parishpriest who received
them near Minas Novas reportedthat "all their zeal and jealousy consists
only in not being deprived of their lands . . . or their women.''86
These were not the first Indians to appearon the upper reaches of the
Jequitinhonha, where, in 1787, a group of Malalis, Indians who were
closely relatedto the Maxacali, also chose Portugueseprotectionratherthan
face furtherconflict with settlers and with the Botocudo. They established
a village at Alto dos Bois, a Portuguesefort not far from Minas Novas.
There militarycommanderssoon began to preferthe Malalis as soldiers over
Portuguese-speakingrecruits: "not only were they more familiar with the
woods, but, neither knowing how to express themselves nor how to judge
the value of money, they were less demanding in terms of pay.''87 The
arrangementdid not, however, last long. The militarycommandersimposed
"severe punishments" on Malali "recruits" who deserted and on Indian
families accused of shelteringthe runawayrecruits.Apparentlyas result, the
Malalis reconsidered their choice. One morning, the officer in charge of
Alto dos Bois woke to find that the Indians had entirely abandonedtheir
84 Maximiliano, p. 429. Also see [JohannBaptist]von Spix and [CarlFriedrichPhilipp]von Martius,

Atravis da Bahia: Excerptos da obra Reisen in Brasilien, trans. Piraji da Silva and Paulo Wolf,
Brasiliana, 118 (Sdo Paulo, 1938), pp. 196-206.
85 Campos, "Itinerario," p. 446. Also see Maximiliano, pp. 223-25, 276-77.
86 "Cartado Vigario geral ... do Arraialde Agua Suja de Minas Novas" (24 February1794), pp.
314-15.
87 Ottoni, "Noticia,"
p. 194
B. J. BARICKMAN 357
village and fled into the forests. But, being no match for the Botocudo, the
Malalis soon returnedand again agreedto live underPortugueserule. Their
number, already greatly reduced by Botocudo attacks, would dwindle to a
mere twenty or so by the early 1850s.88
The Portuguesefaced far greaterdifficulties in conqueringand "domes-
ticating" the Patax6 and Botocudo of southern Bahia, who, unlike the
Maxacali, Malali, and Camacddid not practice agriculture.As agricultur-
alists, the Maxacali, Malali, and Camacacould, at least initially, find con-
tinuities between their earlierway of life and "domestication." But for the
Botocudo and Patax6, "domestication" could only mean a complete and
radicalchange from the lives they led as nomadichunter-gatherers.And, as
hunter-gatherers,they had even greaterreason to fear Portugueseefforts to
penetrate the interior. Maintaininga precariousbalance with their forest
environment, they survived by migrating frequently over large areas in
pursuit of game and other forest resources. The new roads built by the
Portuguese and cattle drives led by ranchers in all likelihood cut across
established migratoryroutes. A group of Botocudos or Patax6s, moreover,
might easily see the simple presence of an exploratory expedition or a
road-buildingteam as an invasion thatwould now compete for game and for
wild fruits and roots in territorythe group claimed as its own.89 The im-
portanceterritoryheld for these Indianswas clear to Te6filo Ottoni, who, in
the 1850s, had contact with the Botocudo on the upper Mucuri. He ingen-
uously noted that the Botocudo would kill to hold onto even small areas
where they hoped to hunt and find wild roots-ingenuously because, as
Ottoni knew fully well, settlers were equally willing to kill for control over
land.90An even greaterthreatcame where settlersdid move into an area and
cleared land to plant crops or open pastures;the forest itself then began to
disappear. Not surprisingly, the Patax6 and Botocudo, confronting what
they surely and, in fact, correctly saw as direct threatsto their way of life
and to their very survival, offered the Portuguese fierce and prolonged
resistance.
Resistance, however, did not always preclude attemptsto reach accom-
modations with the Portuguese. So long as they remained free to hunt,
gather fruit, and wander throughthe forests, groups of Patax6s and Boto-
88Ibid.
89 Cf. Erick D. Langer, "Indians and Explorersin the Gran Chaco: First Contact and Indian-White
Relations in Nineteenth-CenturyBolivia" (paper presented at the conference on "Early Encounters
Between Europeansand Indians in Latin America," NorthernIllinois University, De Kalb, Ill., 23-24
April 1992), pp. 13-15. Cited by permission of the author.
90 Ottoni, p. 194.
cudos were willing to live peacefully with Portuguese-speakingBrazilians.

For example, in 1811 and again in 1812, militaryofficers in chargeof work
on a new road along the Rio Jequitinhonhareportedthat they had no diffi-
culty in establishing peaceful contact with a group of Botocudos. The In-
dians eagerly accepted the red scarves, cassava flour, beads, axes, and
knives the officers gave them. They apparentlybelonged to one of the four
groups of Botocudos whom Wied-Neuwied encounteredin 1816 living on
friendly terms with the Portuguesearoundand near the Quarteldos Arcos,
a fort built on the new road. The Germanprince found them quite willing to
trade bows and arrows for the iron goods he had to offer.91
Yet the possibilities for a lasting peaceful accommodationwere clearly
limited. On the one hand, peace with one groupof Botocudos or Patax6sdid
not guarantee peace with other groups. The Botocudos encountered by
military officers on the Rio Jequitinhonhain 1811 warned them not to
venture into the woods south of the road because "captain [i.e., chief]
Orucuia(the commanderof the southernvillage) was very brave and would
do to the Portuguesewhat he had done to them."'92For the northerngroup
of Botocudos, friendly relationswith the Portuguesewould mean access to
iron goods that could be useful in dealing with their rivals led by captain
Orucuia.Five years later, PrinceMaximilianlearnedthat the four groups of
Botocudos who maintainedpeaceful relations with the Portuguese at the
Quarteldos Arcos greatlyfeareda fifth groupthatlived in the same areaand
that attackedcanoers on the river.93 Thus, as soon as they had establisheda
peaceful relationshipwith one group of Botocudos or Patax6s, the Portu-
guese might quickly find themselves drawninto conflict with other groups.
On the other hand, althougheager to obtain axes and knives, neitherthe
Botocudo nor the Patax6 could use their hunting and gathering skills to
supply the Portuguese with a valuable trade good. In exchange for iron
goods, they had little more to offer than bows, arrows, wild honey, bird
feathers, beeswax, tame parrots, ipecacuanha,and jaguar skins.94None of
those items even remotely had any great commercialimportance.The Por-
91 Silva, pp. 54-61; Maximiliano,pp. 246-72. Also see ibid., pp. 214-15 (on Patax6snearPrado, who
at the time maintainedpeaceful relations with the Portuguese);and Ottoni, pp. 202, 205 (on groups of
Botocudos who, in the 1840s and 1850s, had friendly relations with a settler on the upper Mucuri and
with residents of the Col6nia Leoplodina).
92 Idade d'Ouro, 63 (1811) in Silva, pp. 55-56.
93 Maximiliano, p. 311.
94 With the exception of the later tradein Botocudo childrenas slaves, these are the
only articles that
are mentionedin the available sources that refer to tradeor barterbetween Indians and Portuguese. Not
only are such references scant, but they also give no indication that these items were traded in large
quantities.
B. J. BARICKMAN 359
tuguese, as a result, had no reason to forge a peaceful working relationship

with either the Botocudo or the Patax6 comparable to the agreements
reached at various times between fur tradersand IndiansthroughoutNorth
America.95
Tradewith the Indians, moreover, merely representeda first step toward
conquest and "domestication." The Quarteldos Arcos, aroundwhich four
groups of Botocudos lived peacefully in 1816, was itself built to attractto
the valley of the Rio Jequitinhonhasettlers who would inevitably encroach
on the land used by the Indians for huntingand gathering.
Attempts at peaceful accommodationwith the Portuguese did, indeed,

fail; they gave way to open and violent resistanceto Portugueseefforts to
expand the frontier. Already in 1787, a reporton the troop strengthof the
first-and second-line militias in Bahia describedthe comarca of Porto Se-
guro as "infested by barbarousheathens." The reportwent on to note that
"not a year goes by when the residentsdo not suffer suddenattacksby those
same barbarousheathens, with the loss of life and damageto theircrops.''96
Thirtyyears later, in 1808, the story was much the same. Respondingto an
official enquiryaboutIndians,FranciscoAlves Tourinho,commanderof the
second-line militia at Caravelas catalogued a whole series of attacks and
raids by Botocudos, Patax6s, and other Indiansagainst settlers and claimed
that the situationhad definitely worsened since the 1780s. "These barbar-
ians . . .," he wrote, "are in possession of the most fertile lands for pro-
duction of foodstuffs and of the precious timberfound there, which they do
not exploit, hinderingthe use [of those lands] by the State and by subjects
of the Crown. They now repeat . . . hostilities againstthe very farmswhere
settlers have migrated, fleeing from the . . . ferocity" of the Indians. The
commanderclaimed that twenty-twoyears of experiencein dealing with the
"barbarians"had proven that, even when the Indians sought peace, their
intentions were "sinister." He concluded his response by declaring that
"violence is the most appropriatemeans of renderingthese lands tranquil
and fit for settlement."97
Tragic violence did indeed follow. The very next year, in 1808, Dom
JoaioVI, the Prince Regent who had recently arrivedfrom Portugal, issued
a decree authorizingan "offensive war" against the Botocudo-one of the
95 On the North American fur trade, see, for example, Eric Wolf, Europe and the People without
History (Berkeley, 1982), chap. 6.
96 "Observaqgorelativa aos corpos auxiliarese ordenanqasda Capitaniada Bahia .. ." (1787), p.
225.
97 For the text of Tourinho's response, see Campos, pp. 446-49.
last officially sanctioned wars against unconqueredIndians in Brazilian

history. The decree orderedlocal authoritiesto carry out the war until they
had complete control of the territorywhere the Botocudo lived and until the
Botocudo, "moved by justified terror," sued for peace and submitted"to
the gentle yoke of the law andpromise[d]to live in society [where]they can
become useful vassals just as the immense varietiesof Indians . . . living in
aldeias already are." Dom Jodo went further and, in the same decree,
restored legal slavery for Indians. Military commanderscould enslave for
ten years any Botocudo capturedwith weapons.98
Quickly enough the officially sanctioned"offensive war" began and with

it the widespreadslaughterof unconqueredIndiansin southernBahia and in
neighboring areas in the captainciesof Minas Gerais and Espirito Santo.99
Years later, CharlesHartt,an Americangeologist, learntat Sio Mateusthat
the Botocudo living near the town had been "hunted down like wild
beasts." One settler, in a conversationwith a Hartt, claimed that "during
his life he had, eitherwith his own handor at his command, been the means
of putting to death by knife and gun and poison over a thousand [Botocu-
dos]." 100The settler's claim seems entirelyplausiblegiven thata single raid
98 The text of the royal decree (carta regia) can be found in Carneiroda Cunha, ed., Legislagdo
indigenista, pp. 57-60. The 1808 decree reconfirmedand expandedthe scope of the official war against
the Botocudo authorizedby a royal decrees issued in 1801 and 1806. See Paraiso, "Os botocudos," p.
416; and MoreiraNeto, p. 32. The Prince Regent also issued decrees extending the war to encompass
the Kaingaingin Sdo Paulo in 1808, and againstIndiansin Goias in 1811. Hemming, AmazonFrontier,
pp. 112, 193; Karasch, "Catequese," pp. 401-02.
Apparentlyhaving in mind the various "offensive wars" authorizedby Dom Joho, Hemming(Amazon
Frontier, p. 92) describesthe war againstthe Botocudo declaredin 1808 as "the last official war against
Indians in Brazilianhistory." Indeed, the last declarationof war found in Carneiroda Cunha's compi-
lation of nineteenth-centuryBrazilianlegislation on Indiansis the 1811 decreeextendingto Goiis the war
declared against the Botocudo. See Carneiroda Cunha, ed., Legislagdo indigenista. Many officially-
sponsored expeditions against unconqueredIndians did, of course, take place later and elsewhere in
Brazil, and many of them were just as equally "offensive" in character.But it would seem that none of
those expeditionshad the official statusof an "offensive war." Thus, provinciallaws approvedin Goias
in 1835 and 1836 orderedthe organizationof militaryexpeditions to expel, by force if necessary, the
Canoeiro and Xerente Indians from that province. But althoughthe text of the 1835 law even refers to
captured Indians as "prisoners of war," this legislation did not officially authorize a declarationof
"war" against the Canoeiro. For the text of these laws, see ibid., pp. 161-68.
99 For more detailed accountsof the war againstthe Botocudo(which often expandedinto an open war
against other groups) and their later history, see Hemming, Amazon Frontier, pp. 92-93, 99-100,
365-84; and Paraiso "Os Botocudos," pp. 417-23.
Although before 1808 the Patax6 were regularlydescribedas being nearly as hostile as the Botocudo,
there are almost no references to this group of Indians in the available sources for years after 1808. It
seems likely that, in Portuguese,the Patax6 were convenientlyreclassifiedinto Botocudo and hence into
enemies in the official war. See Carneiroda Cunha, "Polftica indigenista," p. 136; and Hemming,
AmazonFrontier, p. 93.
100 Ch[arles] Fred[erick]Hartt, Geology and Physical
Geographyof Brazil (Boston, 1870), p. 601.
B. J. BARICKMAN 361
in the 1830s returnedto coast with a "booty" of 300 ears cut from the
bodies of dead Botocudos. "Matar uma aldeia (to kill a village)," as
Te6filo Ottoniwould note in the 1850s, soon became "a technicalphrasein
the slang" of Indian "hunters," who sometimes relied on "renegade"
Botocudos as scouts and who generally took care to attack only in large
numbers.'•oOttoni went on to describe the methodtypically used by Indian
"hunters" in "killing a village":
Thevillageis surrounded at night,withtheattackset fordawn.As a rule,the

attackers'firstmove is to seize the bows andarrowsthatare pilednearthe
campfirethateveryfamily[inthevillage]makes.Moreoftenthannot, in this
firstmove, ... [theattackers] completelydisarmthebesieged[Indians].They
thenproceedwiththe slaughter.Aftersettingasidethe youngboys (kurucas)
and a few prettyIndiangirls as booty, they begin to kill the rest without
mercy,andthekillersfeel no moreemotionthananexecutioner feels whenhe
slips the noose aroundthosewho areto be hanged.102
A few adults might be allowed to live and serve as portersfor the "village-
killing" expedition, but the raidersdid not hesitate to "dispense" them, as
soon as convenientlypossible, with a shot in the head. These raids, although
at times justified as reprisalsfor Botocudo attacks, often seem to have had
as their main goal the captureof Indianchildren. Kurucas (enslaved Boto-
cudo children) were tradedup and down the coast and acquiredby settlers
throughoutthe region; they could be found even as far away as the city of
Rio de Janeiro.1'03The "village-killing" expeditions also gave rise to a
grisly export trade of sorts: namely, the sale of Botocudo skulls to early
European anthropologists. Paul Ehrenreich, the German anthropologist,
noted in the early 1890s that "from no otherBraziliantribe had such a large
number of craniums reached Europe." Indeed, after one raid in 1846, a
1o0 Ottoni, pp. 196-98.

102
Ibid., p. 197.
103 Ibid.,
pp. 197-204; Paraiso, "Os Botocudos," p. 419; Karasch, Slave Life, p. 7 (on Botocudo
slaves in Rio). The term kuruca or kurukacomes from the Botocudo word for "child" or "son."
Emmerichand Montserrat,p. 10. The 1808 decree permittingthe enslavementof Botocudos as prisoners
of war was revoked in 1831. But avisos issued by the national governmentin 1845 indicate that the
practiceof enslaving Indiansand selling Indianchildrenas slaves persisted. For the text of the 1831 law
and 1845 avisos, see Carneiroda Cunha,Legislagdo indigenista, pp. 137, 199-202. Indeed, even as late
as the mid-1860s, Hartt (Geology, p. 599) found that settlers continued to hold Botocudo children as
slaves. In the early nineteenthcentury, Indian slaves from Maranhio and northernGoias, "especially
women and children," were shipped for sale to Bel6m in Pardi.Karasch, "Catequese," pp. 402, 404.
By contrastand for reasonsthatare still unclear, the sourcesfor southernBahiado not suggest the regular
enslavementof Indian women. The only possible exception is Ottoni's reference (quoted in the text) to
"a few pretty Indiangirls as booty." The entire issue of the enslavementof Indians in southernBahia
deserves furtherresearch.
Frenchmanbought sixteen skulls to enrich the collections of a Parisian

museum.104
Yet, despite their access to firearms and their willingness to resort to

massacre, the Portuguesedid not achieve any easy victory over the Boto-
cudos. The fighting, often in the form of isolated skirmishes and raids,
interspersedwith brief periods of tense, but guardedpeace, would last for
decades and would require the mobilization of considerable military re-
sources. The PortugueseCrownand, then after 1822, the governmentof the
independentEmpireof Brazil found it necessary, between 1800 and 1850,
to build and man a network of eighty-seven forts, stockades, and armed
guardposts, located along the rivervalleys in an areastretchingfrom the Rio
Doce in the south to the Rio Pardo in the north.'05
Althoughultimatelyunsuccessful, resistanceby the Botocudo and Patax6

did delay and hinder the developmentof a strong commercial economy in
the comarca of Porto Seguro. Their resistance likewise restrictedfrontier
expansion in the region. In a detailed geographicsurvey of Brazil published
in 1817-that is, nine years after Dom Joao's declarationof an "offensive
war" against the Botocudo and a full fifty years afterthe arrivalof Ouvidor
Monteiro-FatherManuel Aires de Casal described Porto Seguro as "the
most backward" region in Portuguese America.106 The population of the
comarca had grown significantlysince OuvidorMonteiro'stime; and, in the
same years, the production of cassava flour had undergone considerable
expansion. Yet, as Aires de Casal knew, exportagriculturehad barelytaken
root in the region, which consequentlylacked any strongdirectlink with the
main circuits of colonial trade. Coffee, for example, had been introduced
into both Porto Seguro and neighboringIlh6us at roughly the same time.
Settlers in coastal Ilh6us, however, did not have to contend with the Boto-
cudos. By 1799, they were alreadyharvestingover 2,000 arrobas (approx-
imately 29,400 kg) of coffee a year. Two decades later, in 1819, production
in neighboringPorto Seguro amountedto no more than 370 arrobas.107
1" Paul Ehrenreich,"Divisio e distribuiqiodas tribusdo Brasil segundo o estado actual dos nossos
conhecimentos," Revista da Sociedade de Geografia do Rio de Janeiro, 7:1 (1892), 34; Ottoni, p. 200;
and Hartt, pp. 584-88, who (p. 579 n.) furthermentions Botocudos who, as living "specimens," were
takento Francein the mid-nineteenthcenturyand subjectedto extensive examinations.Also see Manuela
Carneiroda Cunha, Antropologia do Brasil: Mito, hist6ria, etnicidade (Sio Paulo, 1986), p. 169.
o05Paraiso, "Os Botocudos," pp. 416-18.
'06 [Aires de Casal], 2, p. 73.
107 "Mappa comparativodas producqoensda Parochiada Villa
Viqoza ... no anno de 1819" and
"Mappa dos habitantesda Parochiada Villa de Caravellas... em o anno de 1819; com declaraqio da
produgqoda mesma Parochia.. .," both in "Mapas estatisticosda comarcade PortoSeguro," BN-s/m,
B. J. BARICKMAN 363
Aires de Casal also knew that, despite the increase in the region's pop-
ulation, settlementhad scarcely breachedthe coastal forests or, as he put it,
"the Christians[in Porto Seguro] possess only the lands near the sea."'108
Wied-Neuwied's map of the region, drawn between 1815 and 1817, like-
wise shows that Portuguesecontrolgenerallyextendedno furtherthan a few
miles from the coast.109
Wied-Neuwied, during his travels through Porto Seguro, had seen the
startof work on a road along the Rio Mucurilinking Minas Novas with the
coast.110Like the otherroadsbuilt between 1780 and 1820, the Mucuriroad
failed to make Porto Seguro into a center of long-distance trade. Two
decades later, in 1837, the governmentof Minas Gerais sent Pedro Victor
Reinault on an expedition to open a road along the Mucuriand to convince
the Botocudos in the area to halt their raids on settlers and to allow free
travelto the coast. Reinaultand his expeditionfollowed the trailfirst opened
in 1816 and shortlythereafterabandoned.Duringtheirdescent to the coast,
they passed Morrode Arara,where almost nothingremainedof the sawmill
and plantationthe Count of Barca had tried to establish in 1816. They also
encounteredtwo groups of Botocudo Indians:with the first they were able
to make peaceful contact; but the second group ambushedthe expedition.
Only by convincing the second group thathe had come to aid them against
their enemies was Reinault able to persuade them to accept the gifts he
carriedwith him.111 The road along the Mucuristill had not been built nine
years later when, in 1846, the provincialgovernmentof Bahia sent another
expedition to the area again with orders to open overlandcommunications
with Minas Gerais and to pacify the Indianswho inhabitedthe banks of the
Mucuri. HermenegildoAntonio Barbosa d'Almeida, leader of the expedi-
1-31,19,15. No referencesto coffee appearin the productionand tradestatisticsfor the other townships
in Porto Seguro.
On coffee in Ilheus, see "Sobre as terrasnio cultivadaspertencentesaos ex-jesuitas na Comarcados
Ilheus" (1783) and enclosures, APEB, SH, materialnio classificado (1988); "Officio dos Governadores
interinosda Capitaniada Bahia paraMartinhode Mello e Castro" (23 August 1783), p. 539; Domingos
Alves Branco Moniz Barreto, "Relaqio que contem a descripio ... da Comarcados Ilh6os" (1790),
BN-s/m, 14,1,10, fol. 6; Vilhena, 1, p. 58 and 2, p. 497; [Baltasarda Silva Lisboa (ouvidor, Ilhdus)],
"Memoria sobre o corte das madeirasna Comarcados Ilh6os" (ca. 1800), BN-s/m, 11-34,3,6, fol. 4;
idem, "Memoria sobre a comarca dos Ilh6os" (1802), pp. 15, 18.
108
[Aires de Casal], 2, pp. 73-74.
o09Maximiliano, between pp. 516 and 517.
11OIbid., p. 196.
111Pedro Victor
Reinault, "Relatorio da exposiqio dos Rios Mucury e Todos os Santos" (1837),
RIHGB, 8 (1846), 356-375. One year before the Reinaultexpedition, the provinciallegislatureof Bahia
authorizedthe establishmentof two new stockades (destacamentos)on the Rio Pardoto protectsettlers
from "incursions and assaults by savage tribes." Carneiro da Cunha, Legislaqdo indigenista, pp.
171-72.
tion, reportedthat, during the first few days of theirjourney, the explorers
passed numeroushomesteadsthat settlers, fearingIndianattacks, had aban-
doned. The expedition soon came across a small band of Botocudos, who,
after overcoming their initial distrust,eagerly acceptedthe iron tools, caps,
andfarinha Almeida offered them as gifts.112 Taking partin the expedition
was the vicar of Portalegre,who later drew on informationhe had gathered
to estimate that over 9,000 unconqueredBotocudos, divided into four main
groups, inhabited the area between the Mucuri and the Jequitinhonha.113
The existence of such groupstestified to the very limited authorityexercised
over this area by the governmentof what was now the Province of Bahia in
the independentEmpire of Brazil. The Presidentof the Province of Bahia
admittedas much when, in his 1846 addressto the provinciallegislature, he
noted that, in the formercomarca of PortoSeguro, "thereexists a large strip
of territorycovered with virgin forest between the coast and the Province of
Minas [that is] entirely occupied by wandering and savage Indians ...
Peace with them (harmonizd-los)has so far proved impossible .
.."114
Indeed, only the year before, an attack by Indians (probablyPatax6s) had
resulted in the death of seven slaves and in several other injurieson a farm
near the town of Prado while, furthersouth, near Portalegre, a family of
settlers had died in a Botocudo raid on their homestead.115
112
Hermenegildo Antonio Barbosa d'Almeida, "Viagem 's Villas de Caravellas, Vigosa, Porto
Alegre, de Mucury, aos Rios Mucury, e Peruhipe," RIHGB, 8 (1846), 425-52.
113 Antonio Miguel de Azevedo (vigario, Portalegre)to CaetanoVicente de Almeida
(juiz de Direito,
Comarcade Caravelas), 8 August 1844, APEB, SH, 4611. The provincialgovernmentof Bahia spon-
sored another expedition to explore ways to improve overland communicationsbetween the southern
Bahian coast and Minas Gerais, which published its reportin 1851. See Bahia (province), Commissdo
de exploragCodo Mucurye Gequitinhonha,InnocencioVellozo Pederneiras,Chefe da mesma Commis-
sdo, Interesses materiaes das Comarcas do Sul da Bahia, Comarcas de Caravellas e Porto Seguro.
Relatorio ... (Bahia, 1851). But the expedition brought few, if any concrete results. Robert
Av6-
Lallamant,a Germanphysician, who visited southernBahia in 1859, faced considerabledifficulties in
trying to travel up the Rivers Pardo and Jequitinhonha.He furthercommentedon the need to open an
overlandroute linking Minas with southernBahia. RobertAv6-Lallemant,Viagempelo Norte do Brasil
no ano de 1859, trans. Eduardode Lima Castro, 2 vols. (Rio de Janeiro, 1961), pp. 78-141.
114 Bahia (province), Falla dirigida d Assemblia Legislativa Provincial da Bahia, na Abertura da
Sessdo Ordinariado anno de 1846, pelo Presidenteda ProvinciaFrancisco Jose Sousa Soares d'Andrea
(Bahia, 1846), p. 39.
115 Bahia (province), Falla dirigida d Assemblea Legislativa Provincial da Bahia na Abertura da
Sessdo Ordinaria do anno de 1845, pelo Presidente da Provincia Francisco Jose de Sousa Soares
d'Andrea (Bahia, 1845), p. 5; Almeida, "Viagem," p. 46. Also see Abaixo-assinadodos habitantesda
Vila do Prado, April 1844, APEB, SH, 4611; Bahia (province), Falla que recitou o Presidente da
Provincia da Bahia o Dezembargador Conselheiro Francisco Gongalves Martins n'Aberturada As-
semblea Provincial da mesmaProvincia no 1. de marco de 1851 (Bahia, 1851), p. 6; andOttoni, p. 200.
Av6-Lallement, travellingthroughsouthernBahia in 1859, heardseveral referencesto recent attackson
settlers. But he also encounteredgroupsof Botocudos who, it seems, maintainedpeaceful relationswith
B. J. BARICKMAN 365
At the time of that raid, coffee grown in far southernBahia had already
won a reputationfor superiorquality among merchantsin Rio. Exports of
coffee from the region in the late 1840s stood at over 65,000 arrobas a
year-an enormous increase over outputa few decades earlier, but not at all
impressive when set against the six to nine million arrobas of coffee ex-
ported annually through the port of Rio de Janeiro in the same years.116
Moreover, coffee productionin southernBahia was largely confined to the
townships of Caravelas and Vila Viqosa and to the Colrnia Leopoldina
foundedby Georg Wilhelm Freyreissin 1818. The forty-oddplantationsand
farms at Leopoldinaaccountedfor nearlyhalf the region's outputof coffee.
Farmersin nearbyAlcobaqaharvestedonly trifling amountsof coffee; their
neighbors in the township of Prado, where Indianshad killed seven slaves
in the 1845 attack and where in 1851 it was reportedthat "hordes of wild
Indians lived in the forests," grew no coffee at all.117
IV
The Indians had not won in southernBahia. But nor, for the moment, had
the Portuguese.Even in the mid-nineteenthcentury,they had createdneither
settlerson the upperreaches of the Mucuriin Minas Gerais. Av&-Lallemant,Viagem, 2, pp. 85, 87, 93,
171, 228-43.
116 Bahia ..., Commissdode do Mucury ..., Interesses materiaesdas Comarcasdo Sul
da Bahia, "Quadrocomparativoexploraqgo
da exportaqgode Caravellasduranteos annos de 1845... 1848," no
page, and "Exportagqoda Villa Vigosa duranteo anno de 1849," no page; Luiz ChateaubriandCav-
alcanti dos Santos and HermanoJose Thomy Dultra, "Cafd" in Bahia (state), Secretariado Planeja-
mento, Tecnologia e Ciencia, Fundagio de Pesquisas-CPE [Centrode Planejamentoe Pesquisas], A
insergdo da Bahia na evolugdo nacional la. etapa: 1850-1889: A Bahia no seculo XIX, 5 vols. (Sal-
vador, 1978), 2, pp. 133-36. For exports from Rio de Janeiro, see Stein, Vassouras, p. 53.
117 Bahia ..., Commissdode do Mucury..., Interesses materiaesdas Comarcasdo Sul
exploraqgo
da Bahia, "Mapa ... dos estabelecimentos . . . na margem esquerda ... Colonia Leopoldina," no
page, "Mappa ... dos estabelecimentos . . . na margemdireita ... Colonia Leopoldina," no page,
da Villa Vigosa duranteo anno de 1849," no page, "Quadroda da Villa do
"Exportaqgo
Prado duranteos annos 1845 ... 1848," no page, and "Quadrocomparativoexporataqgoda exportagio da Villa
d'Alcobaqa duranteos annos de 1845 ... 1848," no page; "Estabelecimentosagricolas existentes no
Termo de Alcobaqa" (1852) and "Relagqodos estabelecimentosagricolasexistentes na Villa do Prado"
(1852), both enclosed in Jos6 MartinsAlves (juiz municipal, Alcobaga) to the Pres., 6 October 1852,
APEB, SH, 2228; Bahia. . ., Falla (1851), p. 6; Casmirode Sena Madureira,"Aldeias indigenas da
Provincia da Bahia," 10 January1851, APEB, SH, 4611. Writing in the 1890s, Ehrenreichcould still
refer to areas lying between the Rios Doce and Pardoand as far west as the Rios Cuiet6 and Suagui as
territorybelonging to the Botocudos. Even as late as 1909-10, when groups of Botocudos attacked
engineers working on a railway and a farm, hostile Indians still controlled a large stretch of territory
along the Rio Doce. Ehrenreich,p. 34; Emmerichand Montserrat,p. 15. Also see Hartt,p. 216; P[adre]
Fr[ei] Jacinto de Palazzolo, O.F.M., Cap., Nas selvas dos vales do Mucuri e Rio Doce ..., 2d ed.,
Brasiliana, 277 (Sdo Paulo, 1954); Hemming, Amazon Frontier, pp. 370-84; and Paraiso, "Os Boto-
cudos," pp. 420-22.
a strong commercial economy nor a stable, prosperous, and thoroughly

acculturatedpeasantry. Some 2,200 "Indians"-who had not yet merged
into the rest of the population-still lived in officially administeredalde-
ias.118And there was still that "large strip of territorycovered with virgin
forest between the coast and the Province of Minas, entirely occupied by
wanderingandsavageIndians... [withwhom]peace ... [had]so farproved
impossible..." Clearly,southernBahiaremaineda frontierregionof ongoing
contact, accommodation,and conflictbetweensettlersand Indians.
OctaivioGuilhermeVelho and Joe Fowerakerhave convincingly argued

that the process of frontierexpansion has decisively shaped Brazil's histor-
ical development. Both authorsavoid reducing that process to the simple
movementof settlersinto previouslyunoccupiedterritory.They analyze the
frontieras the locus of ongoing conflicts and strugglesthroughwhich large
landowners displace, often violently, peasants, resulting not only in the
economic incorporationof new areas, but also in the geographicextension
of the State's authorityinto new territories.119Yet amazingly, even when
dealing with the occupation of Amaz6nia in recent times, both Velho and
Fowerakerfail to locate Indiansin those ongoing struggles and conflicts. It
comes as perhaps an even greater surprise that, despite his well-known
concern for the survival of Brazilian Indians and of indigenous cultures
elsewhere in South America, David Maybury-Lewisclaims thatIndianshad
ceased to be an "issue" in Brazil after the Jesuits had unsuccessfully tried
to prevent Indian enslavement in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Indianswould, he argues, not "reemerge" as an issue until the 1880s, when
settlers began expanding into new areas of southernand western Brazil.120
Just as Maybury-Lewisbanishes Indians from nearly two full centuries of
Brazilian history, Fowerakerand Velho, by ignoring Indians, unwittingly
createthe impressionthatland beyondthe frontierconsisted of nothingmore
than empty, uninhabitedspace.121
118 D6ria, pp. 86, 88.

119Octaivio"Localizaqdo,"
GuilhermeVelho, Capitalismoautoritdrioe campesinato, 2d ed. (Sao Paulo, 1979); Joe
Foweraker,The Struglefor Land:A Political Economyof the Pioneer Frontierfrom 1930 to the Present
Day (Cambridge, 1981).
120
David Maybury-Lewis, "Becoming an Indianin Lowland South America" in Nation-Statesand
Indians in Latin America, ed. by Greg Urban and Joel Sherzer(Austin, 1991), pp. 207-235, esp. pp.
218-19. On debates aboutIndiansand Indianpolicy in the late eighteenthand early nineteenthcenturies,
see Carneiroda Cunha, "Politica indigenista"; and Hemming, AmazonFrontier, chaps. 7-9. Also see
the 241 pages of legislation on Indians, dating from the years 1808-1879, in Carneiroda Cunha, ed.,
Legislagdo indigenista, pp. 57-297.
121 In this
way, all three authorsin effect and no doubt unintentionallyvalidate the slogan used by
Brazil's post-1964 military regime in promoting settlement in Amazonia: "a land without people for
B. J. BARICKMAN 367
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenthcenturies, settlers, royal offi-

cials, and backwoodsmenin southernBahia were all too aware that Indians
remained a very real "issue" and that the nearby forests were not empty,
uninhabitedspace. While settlers counted on the labor of "tame" Indians
who were draftedto clear fields, open roads, and cut timber, they also had
to remain on constant watch for any sign of "wild heathens," whose raids
and attackscould lay waste to a fledgling commercialeconomy. At the same
time, the presenceof both "tame" and unconqueredIndiansin PortoSeguro
only underscoredfor royal officials the very limited authorityexercised by
the Crown over this stretch of the Braziliancoast. Increasingthe Crown's
authoritynecessarily meant dealing in some way with the region's indige-
nous population.Royal officials had to lay out in detaila projectfor bringing
that populationunderPortugueserule. In other words, they were forced to
define both for the Indians and for themselves exactly what, in their eyes,
it meant culturally, economically, politically, and even sexually to be a
colonial subject of the PortugueseCrown. For Indianswho openly resisted
that project, they also defined the alternativeto incorporation-namely,vi-
olent subjugation,enslavement, and even physical extermination.
In the end, however, given an historiographythat has virtually ignored
Indians after they greeted Pedro Alvares Cabraland his crew in 1500, the
particulardetails of Indian-Portugueserelationsin southernBahia in the late
eighteenth and early nineteenthcenturiesmay be far less importantthan the
simple fact that the Indians were there-that, despite warfare, enslavement,
forced wage work, the disruptionof family life, and coercive resettlement
schemes, an indigenous populationhad survived in this coastal region of
Brazil.
The survival of that population, even in reduced numbers, gains greater
importancewhen we recall that, after their lookouts caught sight of Monte
Pascoal, Cabral and his crew first made landfall in Brazil at a bay on the
south Bahian coast that they christenedPorto Seguro. Of course, Indians
had been there when Cabral arrived. They had paddled out to his ship in
theircanoes and gone aboardto meet the strangevisitors. But they were also
there two and a half centurieslater when OuvidorTome Couceirode Abreu
reportedthatthe "heathens" had their "den of villages" on the "skirts" of
Monte Pascoal just as, more than three hundredyears after Cabral, Indians
were there when Prince Maximilianvon Wied-Neuwiedtravelledalong that
people without land." On the settlementprogram,see Hecht and Cockburn,Fate of the Forest, esp. pp.
123-24.
stretch of the coast in 1816.122 And today, nearly five hundredyears after
Cabral, Indians still live aroundMonte Pascoal and on reservationselse-
where in southernBahia. They continue to struggleagainst landownersand
loggers in the area to hold on to what little land they still retain.123 That
struggle is very much a part of Brazil's past, and for the Patax6 who have,
in recent years, faced gunmen hired by local ranchers, it has never been a
"silent struggle."
Universityof Arizona B. J. BARICKMAN

Tucson, Arizona
122
Abreu, "Relagqo" (1764), p. 41; Maximiliano, pp. 219-20.
123
Rocha Jr., "Persistencia," pp. 64-67; MariaHilda BaqueiroParafso, "Os Patax6s
Hiihiihii do
Pi Caramaru-Paraguaqu," Cultura(Salvador, BA), 1:1 (1988), 53-58; OrdepT. Serra, "The Patax6 of
Bahia: Persecution and DiscriminationContinue," Cultural Survival Quarterly, 13:1 (1989), 16-17;
Brazil, Congresso, Camarados Deputados, Comissio do indio, Relat6rioPatax6 (Brasflia, 1988). Also
see "Indios baianostamb6mse sentem roubados,"A Tarde(Salvador), 17 November 1993, 1, 3, which
reportsfor the state of Bahia a currentpopulationof some 15,000 Indians, the majorityof whom live in
the southernmostregions of the state. The article also refers to corruptionwithin various Brazilian
governmentagencies that deal with Indian affairs in Bahia and to ongoing disputes over land and land
use in areas that, in principle, have been assigned as indigenous reserves. (I am grateful to Professor
Mary C. Karaschfor providingme with a copy of this article.) On a small groupof 147 Botocudos who
survive in and aroundan official reservationin easternMinas Gerais and the difficulties they have faced
in maintainingcontrol over the land legally assigned to them, see
Parafso, "Os Krenakdo Rio Doce."

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"Tame Indians," "Wild Heathens," and Settlers in Southern Bahia in the Late Eighteenth and

Early Nineteenth Centuries

"TAME INDIANS," "WILD HEATHENS,"

contact, accommodation,and conquest have become, in Mattos's words, a

Yet, for all the devastationcaused by warfare,diseases, and enslavement

ber of Indiansliving in the city of Rio de Janeiro.4The expansion of coffee

way for furtherPortuguese7 settlementandultimatelylead to the complete

7 Throughoutthis essay, the termsPortuguese, Portuguese-speakingsettlers, and variantsthereof are

Indianresistancewas nothingnew in PortoSeguro. The generalpovertythat

demand for labor strainedtheir relationshipwith the settlers. The resulting

" Hemming, Red Gold, pp. 93-94; CharlotteEmmerichand RuthMontserrat"Sobre

ming, AmazonFrontier, pp. 93-94.

The late eighteenth and early nineteenthcenturies, by contrast, brought a

naturalist Georg Wilhelm Freyreiss had in 1818 received permission to

The developmentof tradeand agricultureaccompaniedpopulationgrowth

POPULATION OF THE COMARCAOF PORTO SEGURO, CA. 1

Free non-Indian Black and M

1819 Caravelas 3,552 1,930 (54.3) 1,434

missionaries.21 The comarca continuedto export timber as well as various

which they were now responsible encompassed a large, sparsely settled

settlements, separatedby considerable expanses of wilderness and dense

Porto Seguro's ouvidores correctly realized that, in carrying out their

Gonqalves da Costa, "Memoria summariae compendiosada Conquistado Rio Pardo" (1806-1807),

mid-eighteenth-centurylist of missions administered,until 1759, by the Jesuitsclassifies the inhabitants

into loyal subjects of the Crown who in one way or anothercontributedto

Achieving that transformationwould not be an easy task. Jose Xavier

As early as 1764, Tome Couceiro de Abreu, as royal judge for the

introducedby the Jesuits. But, althoughthe Jesuits attemptedto impose wide-rangingculturalchanges

That combinationwas most immediatelyvisible in the aldeias and Indian

OuvidorMonteirotried to overcome these difficulties not by dealing with

42 Monteiro, "Instrucq6espara o governo dos Indios" (n.d.), p. 379.

47 At least according the Directorate,Indian

hundred Indian children of both sexes had already been "distributedfor

49 Monteiro, "Carta .. ." (April 1773), p. 272.

hence, buy clothing. Accordingly, Monteirohad included in his "Instruc-

The directorsposted in each village or settlement were responsible not

too useful in controllingthe Indianpopulationand in promotingsettlement

In part, as the FrenchtravellerAuguste de Saint-Hilairenoted in the early

It would, however, be misleadingto focus only on the personalcharacter

The Diret6riolegislation and the adaptationsintroducedby OuvidorMon-

Even more damaging, no doubt, was the distributionof adult Indians as

Moreover, an 1820 census of the township of Sio Mateus suggests that

65 Ibid., pp. 182, 191.

bore little resemblance to farming by a free peasantry. Ouvidor Monteiro

Finally, authoritiesfreely uprootedfamilies of settled Indians,using them

Ouvidor Monteiro finally left Porto Seguro in 1777 after a decade-long

at over 16,000, Porto Seguro was shippingover 140,000 alqueires (bushels)

That flour, however, came overwhelmingly from the farms of Portu-

71 See note 74 below.

For both colonial authorities and settlers, drunkennessand the flight of

77 On these Indians, see notes 27-29 above.

to his life, and, withoutcontinuedtraffic, any roadin this Americais, within

80 Abreu, "RelaqIo" (8 January1764), p. 42.

ATTEMPTS TO IMPROVE COMMUNICATIONS BETWEEN THE COAST AND

Prince Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied, who visited some of Costa's Ca-

84 Maximiliano, p. 429. Also see [JohannBaptist]von Spix and [CarlFriedrichPhilipp]von Martius,

cudos were willing to live peacefully with Portuguese-speakingBrazilians.

tuguese, as a result, had no reason to forge a peaceful working relationship

Attempts at peaceful accommodationwith the Portuguese did, indeed,

last officially sanctioned wars against unconqueredIndians in Brazilian

Quickly enough the officially sanctioned"offensive war" began and with

Thevillageis surrounded at night,withtheattackset fordawn.As a rule,the

1o0 Ottoni, pp. 196-98.

Frenchmanbought sixteen skulls to enrich the collections of a Parisian