Native Brazil : beyond the convert and the cannibal, 1500-1900 / edited by Hal Langfur.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Langfur, Hal, author, editor.

Series:

Diálogos (Albuquerque, N.M.)

Diálogos

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Indians of South America--Brazil--History.

Indians of South America.

Colonization.

Indians of South America--Missions.

History.

Indians, Treatment of.

Brazil.

Indians, Treatment of--Brazil--History.

Indians of South America--First contact with other peoples--Brazil.

Indians of South America--First contact with other peoples.

Indians of South America--Missions--Brazil--History.

Indians of South America--Brazil--Government relations.

Brazil--Colonization.

Physical Description:

xvi, 285 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Albuquerque : University of New Mexico Press, 2014.

Summary:

The earliest European accounts of Brazil's indigenous inhabitants focused on the natives' startling appearance and conduct-especially their nakedness and cannibalistic rituals-and on the process of converting them to Christianity. This volume contributes to the unfinished task of moving beyond such polarities and dispelling the stereotypes they fostered, which have impeded scholars' ability to make sense of Brazil's rich indigenous past. This volume is a significant contribution to understanding the ways Brazil's native peoples shaped their own histories. Incorporating the tools of anthropology, geography, cultural studies, and literary analysis, alongside those of history, the contributors to this volume revisit old sources and uncover new ones. They examine the Indians' first encounters with Portuguese explorers and missionaries and pursue the consequences. Some of the peoples they investigate were ultimately defeated and displaced by the implacable advance of settlement. Many individuals died in epidemics, frontier massacres, and forced labor. Hundreds of groups eventually disappeared as distinct entities. Yet many others found ways to prolong their independent existence or to enter colonial and later national society, making pivotal though constrained choices along the way. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction : recovering Brazil's indigenous pasts / Hal Langfur

The Society of Jesus and the first aldeias of Brazil / Alida C. Metcalf

Land and economic resources of indigenous aldeias in Rio de Janeiro : conflicts and negotiations, seventeenth to nineteenth centuries / Maria Regina Celestino de Almeida

Colonial intrusions and the transformation of native society in the Amazon Valley, 1500-1800 / Neil L. Whitehead

The Amazonian native nobility in late-colonial Pará / Barbara A. Sommer

Indian autonomy and slavery in the forests and towns of colonial Minas Gerais / Hal Langfur and Maria Leônia Chaves de Resende

Catechism and capitalism : imperial indigenous policy on a Brazilian frontier, 1808-1845 / Judy Bieber

Catechism and captivity : Indian policy in Goiás, 1780-1889 / Mary Karasch

Indigenous resistance in central Brazil, 1770-1890 / Mary Karasch and David McCreery.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780826338419

0826338410

9780826338402

0826338402

OCLC:

862222085