{"id":237949,"date":"2017-05-17T15:08:57","date_gmt":"2017-05-17T18:08:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=237949\/"},"modified":"2017-05-17T15:08:57","modified_gmt":"2017-05-17T18:08:57","slug":"a-strategy-of-enticement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/a-strategy-of-enticement\/","title":{"rendered":"A strategy of enticement"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Chorographical map of the province of Paran\u00e1, National Library, Rio de Janeiro, Cartographic Records <\/span><\/a> Map of the province of Paran\u00e1 and inset of S\u00e3o Pedro de Alc\u00e2ntara settlement in 1859Chorographical map of the province of Paran\u00e1, National Library, Rio de Janeiro, Cartographic Records <\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

From 1845 to 1889, the Portuguese Empire worked to establish indigenous settlements throughout the provinces of Brazil. These settlements were agricultural colonies that were intended to attract indigenous peoples and transform them into rural workers. They were created under an agreement between the Brazilian government and the Vatican agency responsible for sending Catholic missions to different corners of the world, then known as the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (Propaganda Fide) and later rechristened the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. The Vatican wanted to boost its presence in Brazil by converting Indians to Christianity. The Brazilian Imperial Crown, on the other hand, was concerned about expanding its control over the nation\u2019s territory, recruiting workers to grow coffee and harvest rubber, and building roads to connect far-off regions. With these interests in mind, Emperor Pedro II signed a decree that allowed Capuchin Franciscan missionaries to emigrate from Italy to Brazil to organize and run indigenous settlements.<\/p>\n

The plan was that through the work of the missionaries, who were hired as servants of the Empire, the Indians would be \u201ccivilized\u201d and catechized, so they might later join the European immigrants who were arriving in Brazil and setting up their own colonies. Furthermore, by encouraging the Indians to leave their land and move to the area of the settlements, the government hoped that immigrant farmers and workers could occupy the native lands. Some indigenous village leaders received military titles and were drafted to serve in conflicts, including the War of the Triple Alliance (1864-1870). In addition to growing food, the Indians were also recruited to build roads, a job for which they received a wage.<\/p>\n

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J. H. Elliott \u2013 National Library, Iconography Section <\/span><\/a> View of Salto dos Dourados on the Paranapanema RiverJ. H. Elliott \u2013 National Library, Iconography Section <\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Marta Amoroso, professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of S\u00e3o Paulo (USP), has published Terra de \u00cdndio: Imagens em Aldeamentos do Imp\u00e9rio <\/em>[Indian land: images from the Empire\u2019s settlements] (Terceiro Nome, 2016), based on FAPESP-funded doctoral and post-doctoral research. The book analyzes the experience of a system of settlements in Paran\u00e1, particularly its central hub, S\u00e3o Pedro de Alc\u00e2ntara, one of the longest-lived in Brazil. Relatively little research has been done on indigenous peoples in the 19th century, says Amoroso, who believes the gap is a result of the day\u2019s catechizing efforts, because missionaries like the Capuchins tried to spread the idea that all Indians had been converted and thus diminish their historical identity.<\/p>\n

Based on a trio of primary sources \u2013 reports and letters held at the Capuchin Franciscan Archives at the Holy Basilica of St. Sebastian, in the neighborhood of Tijuca, Rio de Janeiro; accounts by traveling naturalists who crossed the region; and works by ethnologists such as the German Curt Nimuendaju \u2013 Amoroso sought an interpretation that would highlight the experience of the settlements from the Indian\u2019s perspective. In doing so, she revealed a new dimension of the experience, previously examined primarily in keeping with the official viewpoint. According to the researcher, religious records on the S\u00e3o Pedro de Alc\u00e2ntara settlement provide information on how different ethnic groups occupied these settlements and coexisted with them. They show that Kaingang leaders were involved in settlement management and stayed on even after the Capuchin Franciscans had ended their mission, as is the case of the present-day S\u00e3o Jer\u00f4nimo da Serra Indigenous Land, in Paran\u00e1. The same records also tell how groups of Indians fled in the wake of epidemics and the conflicts that erupted upon forced contact with enemy groups.<\/p>\n

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J. H. Elliott \u2013 National Library, Iconography Section <\/span><\/a> Portrait of Chief Pahi Kaiow\u00e1 of Santo In\u00e1cio do Paranapanema settlementJ. H. Elliott \u2013 National Library, Iconography Section <\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Appealing to the palate<\/strong>
\nIn her book, Amoroso also describes how the establishment of these settlements was linked to the organization of military colonies, reflecting the intention to use intimidation to delimit Brazil\u2019s internal borders to the benefit of European landowners and immigrants. Maria Luiza Ferreira de Oliveira, professor of the history of Brazil at the Guarulhos campus of the Federal University of S\u00e3o Paulo (Unifesp), explains that military colonization was embraced as a public policy precisely when the government was looking to increase its rule over indigenous lands in order to raise coffee in the Southeast and sugar and cotton in the Northeast. \u201cThey also expected to find potential riches in the forests inhabited by the Indians,\u201d she says. Within this framework, the notion governing the establishment of the military colonies was that of peaceful approach, that is, an effort was made to persuade the Indians to join the settlements. \u201cBut mixing threats with enticements was actually the Empire\u2019s way of doing a more effective job of persuasion,\u201d the researcher argues.<\/p>\n

Lying on the banks of the Tibagi River, the S\u00e3o Pedro de Alc\u00e2ntara settlement was the center of a network that stretched the entire length of the Paranapanema River, from S\u00e3o Paulo to Paran\u00e1. The settlement was once home to some 4,000 Indians from four ethnic groups: the Kaingang, of the Macro-J\u00ea linguistic trunk, and the Kaiow\u00e1, Nhandeva, and Mby\u00e1, all of which speak Guarani. This number included Indians who moved to the area of the settlements as well as those who already lived in the vicinity. Amoroso\u2019s research tells how each indigenous group interacted with the settlement. Each group\u2019s motivation depended on specific interests: the Guarani-Nhandeva went to receive the clothing and medicine handed out by the friars, but did not settle there, whereas the Kaingang and Guarani-Kaiow\u00e1 took part in agricultural labor and activities at the S\u00e3o Pedro de Alc\u00e2ntara settlement distillery.<\/p>\n

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Photos Franz Keller, 1865; Newton Carneiro, 1950, Iconografia Paranaense (Curitiba: Impressora Paranaense, 1950)<\/span><\/a> The Kaingang Indian Vei-Banj, of S\u00e3o Pedro de Alc\u00e2ntara settlementPhotos Franz Keller, 1865; Newton Carneiro, 1950, Iconografia Paranaense (Curitiba: Impressora Paranaense, 1950)<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Missionaries and government personnel lived inside the settlements themselves, whereas the Indians stayed in villages nearby. There was a tendency for the Indians to migrate between different hubs and in some cases return to their land of origin. \u201cThe missionaries tried to lure the Indians by appealing to their palates, with the idea that they would have a bodily experience of Christian civilization by receiving salt, sugar, coffee, and cacha\u00e7a<\/em>,\u201d Amoroso says. It was believed that these attractions would entice the Indians to abandon their savage ways. But according to Empire policy, once an Indian had been \u201ccivilized,\u201d he no longer had a right to settlement resources. The parameters for determining whether an Indian had been \u201ccivilized\u201d were his willingness to work the crops and wear clothing and his abandonment of forest life. But some \u201ccivilized\u201d Indians would move to other settlements and pretend they were still \u201csavage\u201d so they could ask for clothing, tools, food, and other provisions.<\/p>\n

After 1845, the year of the first wave of immigration under the settlement program, some 100 Capuchin Franciscans arrived from Italy. Their earliest accounts described the Indians as childish in nature and endowed with limited intellectual capacity. However, Amoroso\u2019s research shows how coexistence shifted this perception over the years. \u201cThey began to see the Indians as people with a pure, unadulterated mentality,\u201d the researcher says. An example of this can be found in the writings of Friar Thimoteo de Castelnuevo (housed at the Holy Basilica of St. Sebastian), who lived at the S\u00e3o Jer\u00f4nimo de Alc\u00e2ntara settlement for 50 years. By the end of his life, according to Amoroso, the cleric was \u201cexalting the grandeur of the Indian soul, contrary to the hypocrisy of civilization.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Photos Franz Keller, 1865; Newton Carneiro, 1950, Iconografia Paranaense (Curitiba: Impressora Paranaense, 1950)<\/span><\/a> Captain Manuel Arepquembe, chief of the Kaingang Indians of S\u00e3o Pedro de Alc\u00e2ntara settlementPhotos Franz Keller, 1865; Newton Carneiro, 1950, Iconografia Paranaense (Curitiba: Impressora Paranaense, 1950)<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

In another account, Friar Lu\u00eds de Cimitille expressed the frustration he felt as he struggled to catechize Manuel Arepquembe, captain-chief and head of the Kaingang at the S\u00e3o Jer\u00f4nimo settlement. In his memoirs, the friar reports on his many futile attempts to convert the Indian, who refused to accept the existence of a supreme, omnipresent god. When the friar realized that Arepquembe was going to the settlement to receive goods, the cleric came to the conclusion that his missionary enterprise had failed. In closing his account, he complained that the Indian had never even learned to cross himself and that, at their final meeting, he had laughed as he bid the cleric a \u201csarcastic farewell.\u201d<\/p>\n

Convenience factor<\/strong>
\nAccording to Amoroso, the fact that many Indians were seeking to satisfy their own interests when they visited the settlements is borne out by the failed attempts to make S\u00e3o Pedro de Alc\u00e2ntara economically productive by growing coffee and tobacco. These experiments were not successful because the Indians expressed no interest in coffee and were much too interested in tobacco and thus depleted the harvest. Later, when the missionaries decided to try their hand at planting sugarcane and also built a rum distillery, they had help from the Kaingang and Guarani-Kaiow\u00e1, who took up the work because they liked the liquor. \u201cSome ethnic groups were also seeking support when they visited the settlements \u2013 weapons, for example, which they used in their clashes with rival groups,\u201d the researcher explains.<\/p>\n

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Photos Franz Keller, 1865; Newton Carneiro, 1950, Iconografia Paranaense (Curitiba: Impressora Paranaense, 1950)<\/span><\/a> S\u00e3o Pedro de Alc\u00e2ntara settlement depicted in an 1865 sketch by German artist Franz KellerPhotos Franz Keller, 1865; Newton Carneiro, 1950, Iconografia Paranaense (Curitiba: Impressora Paranaense, 1950)<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

These conclusions stand in contrast with the standard interpretation of settlement policy, Amoroso says, which has generally assigned indigenous peoples a passive role. \u201cEven when \u2018civilized\u2019, the Indians sustained their beliefs and used the settlement policy to their own advantage,\u201d argues anthropologist Paula Montero, professor at the USP Department of Anthropology and deputy coordinator of Human and Social Sciences for FAPESP, who sees the reconstruction of Indian subjectivity as one of the prime achievements of Amoroso\u2019s research. Montero studied the experience of the settlements run by Christian missionaries in two research projects: \u201cChristian Missionaries in the Brazilian Amazon\u201d (2001-2007) and \u201cMissionary Textuality: Salesian ethnographies in Brazil\u201d (2008-2010).<\/p>\n

As to the paucity of research on the indigenous question in the 19th century, Montero explains that in the 1950s, the field of ethnology started conducting on-site surveys of indigenous peoples in an effort to understand their cosmological universe, an approach that dominated the field until quite recently. Moreover, Montero says, the past 50 years have brought a tendency for members of religious orders to be blamed for destroying indigenous peoples, a perspective that undermined interest in the study of relations between missionaries and Indians in the field of anthropological study.<\/p>\n

Book
\nAMOROSO, M. Terra de \u00cdndio: Imagens em Aldeamentos do Imp\u00e9rio<\/strong>. S\u00e3o Paulo: Terceiro Nome, 2014, 246 pp.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Imperial government sought to push native peoples off their lands","protected":false},"author":601,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[165],"tags":[201,241],"coauthors":[1600],"class_list":["post-237949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humanities","tag-anthropology","tag-history"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/601"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237949\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237949"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=237949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}