Entre São Francisco Xavier e a Madre de Deus: a etnia Paiaku nas fronteiras da colonização.

Abstract

The late occupation of the hinterlands of the captaincy of northern Portuguese colony in America would make the seventeenth century one of the periods of greatest violence in Brazil's history. The meeting of the settlers with the multiplicity of languages and peoples who inhabited that lands, in contrast to the relative cultural homogeneity of Tupi, on the coast, has with these people were generically called “Tapuia”. Among them was Paiaku ethnicity, always considered a serious obstacle to the effective occupation of the captaincy of Ceará. Were these natives who would become the main characters of the conflicts in the Jaguaribe river, presenting a wide range of interests and actions against the colonizing project. This work seeks therefore to examine the different agencies of ethnic Paiaku before the colonization of the captaincy of Ceará, in different moments of its evolution. Is valued, in this analysis, the installation of missionary villages and conflicts resulting from this process.