Colonial Indians. Indigenous Agency in Northeast Brazil in the Seventeenth Century

Based on several colonial documents focusing on the northeast region of Brazil, this article aims to reflect on the multiple paths of political and symbolic mediation between indigenous groups and colonial power, in relation to both military and religious aspects. On the one hand, war was justified by the need to dominate ‘rebellious’ Indians, on the other, indigenous peoples’ war skills made them desirable allies for the colony. Indigenous leaders were able to take advantage of this to assert themselves in a position of subject in the colonial world. Likewise, indigenous conversion had practical, political, and symbolic reasons. The documentation shows the historical dynamics through which native groups and their leaders sought instruments of political affirmation in the colonial world, constructing a symbolic universe shared by other social actors and reconstituting a new hierarchy of social and power relations.