Indigenous populations in the villages of Assunção and Santa Maria (18th and 19th centuries)

Historical experiences and territorialization in the hinterlands of the São Francisco River

Abstract

This article aims to understand the historical experiences of the indigenous populations in the villages of Assunção         and Santa Maria, located on the islands of the São Francisco River in the Hinterlands of Pernambuco between the 18th and 19th centuries. The objective of our text is to understand the processes of mixing and territorialization in the aforementioned villages in those centuries and relate them to the experiences of territorial and cultural transformation produced by the civilizing policy of the Pombaline Directory. Through this, the indigenous populations were forced to “mix” through interethnic marriages, between the indigenous people of the extinct missionary villages and the Portuguese’s white settlers. This was a strategy of the Portuguese Crown to insert the indigenous people as vassals of the State and as a labor force for the Colony, without the agency of the Jesuits and other religious orders. From this “mixture” situation, the indigenous people of the villages of Assunção and Santa Maria experienced other events related to sedentarization, forced labor, assimilation, and the invasion of their lands. In view of these situations, we identified in 19th century documents that the indigenous people of these villages reorganized their sociopolitical strategies to confront the invaders of their territories. These corresponded to a set of negotiation, self-government, resistance, and disobedience tactics based on “repositories of experiences” acquired over the years and used both in the defense of their territories and in the assertion of indigenous identity. In the analysis of the sources, the “Long-term History” perspective allows the identification of the events and situations experienced by the indigenous people of Assunção and Santa Maria. On the other hand, the microanalysis method helps to understand the strategies they developed in the defense of their territories and assertion of their ethnicities. Among the strategies identified in the documents, we can mention the exercise of indigenous self-government in Vila de Assunção.