Indigenous peoples in the Provincial Presidential Reports of Rio Grande do Norte

Angélica Lopes Bulhões

Historian (UFRN)

Cristiano Otávio Miguel Junior

Historian (UFRN)

Several historical sources on Indigenous peoples of Rio Grande do Norte in the colonial period have already been gathered in a catalog by Professor Fátima Martins Lopes, entitled “Catalogue of Single Manuscript Documents Referring to the Captaincy of Rio Grande do Norte Existing in the Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino de Lisboa ”. This catalogue gathers documents from 1623 to 1823 and can be found on the internet. It also presents an index containing the ethnic names of the time.

The original microfilmed and digitized documents are catalogueed and available on the “Projeto Resgate – Rio Grande do Norte (1623-1823)” website.Click here to access.

For the imperial period, we researched the sources of the Provincial Presidential Reports of Rio Grande do Norte, which are also digitized and available for consultation.Click here to access.

The documents are hosted on the website called “Center for Research Libraries: global resources networks”, which contains a table for each province with the summary of the documents, their date and number of pages. On this site, there are documents from 1835 to 1930. However, our focus lies upon the imperial period, between 1835 and 1889.

We have searched for mentions of Indigenous people in the Rio Grande do Norte Reports and found several documents, which contradict the idea that there are no native people in official documents from the imperial period in the state. Among these documents, we found Indians appearing mainly in statistical censuses, marriage, baptism and death records. These data were attached to the Report, containing the number of Indians, the division by age and by sex. It is interesting to note that the Indians, as well as the captive and free black people, sometimes appeared and sometimes were hidden from official reports.

In addition to these direct appearances under the labem Indians, we also find mentions in the Reports of “civilization savages” and “indolent inhabitants of Brazil”, “who live in laziness and idleness”, which we believe also refers to Indigenous people. The table below shows the documents that we found that make these mentions:

Relatórios de Presidente de Província que aparecem os indígenas Número de páginas Discurso 1838 45 Relatorio apresentado á Assembléa Legislativa da provincia do Rio Grande do Norte na abertura da ultima sessão ordinaria da 2. legislatura provincial, no dia 7 de setembro de 1839: pelo ex.mo presidente da provincia d. Manoel de Assis Mascarenhas. 39 Discurso pronunciado pelo excellentissimo presidente da provincia do Rio Grande do Norte na abertura da segunda sessão ordinaria da quinta legislatura da Assembléa Legislativa Provincial no dia 7 de setembro de 1845. 22 Discurso com que o illustrissimo e excellentissimo senhor dr. Casimiro José de Moraes Sarmento, presidente desta provincia do Rio Grande do Norte, abriu a 1.a sessão da 6.a legislatura da Assembléa Legislativa Provincial, anno de 1846. 39 Discurso apresentado pelo illustrissimo e excellentissimo senhor doutor Cazimiro José de Moraes Sarmento, presidente da provincia do Rio Grande do Norte, na abertura da segunda sessão da sexta legislatura da Assemblea Legislativa Provincial, no dia 7 de setembro de 1847. 27 Falla dirigida á Assembléa Legislativa Provincial do Rio Grande do Norte na sessão ordinaria do anno de 1851, pelo ill.mo e ex.mo sr. presidente da provincia, o doutor José Joaquim da Cunha. 15 Falla dirigida á Assembléa Legislativa Provincial do Rio Grande do Norte na sessão ordinaria que teve lugar no dia 17 de fevereiro do anno de c, pelo illm. e exm. sr. presidente da provincia, o dr. Antonio Francisco Pereira de Carvalho. 22 S/Titulo 1862 21 Falla com que o exm. sr. dr. João Capistrano Bandeira de Mello Filho abrio a 1a sessão da vigesima legislatura da Assembléa Legislativa Provincial do Rio Grande do Norte em 13 de julho de 1874. 136 Quadro elaborado por Angélica Lopes Bulhões e Cristiano Otávio Miguel Júnior com base no site Center for Research Libraries: global resources networks. Acesso em: 15/11/2018.

In the 1874 document, “Speech by which the illustrious Mr. Dr. João Capistrano Bandeira de Mello Filho opened the 1st session of the twentieth legislature of the Provincial Legislative Assembly of Rio Grande do Norte on July 13, 1874”, data from the population census carried out in 1872 was presented as thus: whites, blacks, browns and caboclos.

By these means, we can see that the category “Indian”, which years before had appeared in provincial reports and speeches, mysteriously disappeared in the census carried out in 1872. It is important to contextualize that, at the time Brazilian State carried out the first national census, a process of legitimizing miscegenation was underway, which also operated in the sphere of social discourse, in which categories such as “pardo” and “caboclo” played a role in the consolidation of the narrative of miscegenation of Brazilian people.

We begin with the hypothesis that the Indigenous people not mentioned in the population census are the “pardos” and “caboclos” ones, since these categories make it possible to understand that there is a mixture between races. This shows that there is an effort on the part of the Brazilian State to hide Indigenous identity, since the first national census excludes from its questionnaire the possibility of an individual recognizing himself as an Indian. It is worth mentioning that this perspective is found in the population census of the Province of Rio Grande do Norte.

SThus, the categories “pardos” and “caboclos” legitimize a discourse by which there were no more Indians in the Province of Rio Grande do Norte in the mid-nineteenth century, since official documents systematically concealed the Indigenous identity. The Indian had disappeared from the census as a population category, leaving only the “pardo” and “caboclo” alternatives.

In this sense, we seek to emphasize the idea of ​​caboclismo or caboclização as a form of resistance. Maria Sylvia Porto Alegre suggests that: “The loss of visibility, the so-called ‘disappearance’, has a direct relationship with the emergence of the category called ‘caboclo’, a product of cultural dynamics of contact” (Porto Alegre, 1993, p. 214). From this perspective, Fátima Lopes states that “miscegenation can be identified as a reason for this decrease in the number of registered Indians, since the mestizos may represent descendants who were gradually being identified as non Indians.” (Fátima Lopes, 2011, p. 190).

Therefore, these population categories, created in the national census, corroborate an explicit process of concealing Indigenous identity and a rigging by the State aiming to make the ethnic category, Indian, invisible. We can understand this as a process of annulment of the ethnic and cultural diversity constitutive of the formation of Brazil as a Nation State.

Authors:

Angélica Lopes Bulhões - Historian (UFRN)

Cristiano Otávio Miguel Junior - Historian (UFRN)

References

LOPES, Fátima Martins. Miscigenação nas vilas indígenas do Rio Grande do Norte. Revista Mosaico, v. 4, n. 2, p.183-196, jul./dez. 2011.

PORTO ALEGRE, Maria Sylvia. Aldeias indígenas e povoamento do Nordeste no final do século XVIII: aspectos demográficos da “cultura de contato”. In: DINIZ, Eli; LOPES, José Sérgio; PRANDI, Reginaldo (Org.). Ciências Sociais hoje – 1993. São Paulo: ANPOCS, HUCITEC, 1993.