Entre o forte e a aldeia: estratégias de contato, negociação e conflito entre Europeus e Indígenas no Ceará Holandês (1630 – 1654)

Abstract

This paper explores the relations established between indigenous peoples and European colonists, on Ceará, during the first half of the XVII century, especially during the period of occupation of this captaincy by the Dutch West Indies Company, between 1637 and 1654. It argues that the captaincy of Ceará at that time, due to its condition on the periphery of Colonial Brazil, had a particular dynamic of relative equilibrium between the native indigenous population and the colonizing element, which prompted the development of a series of strategies of contact, between the Indians and the Europeans, to deal with one another. Those strategies included the exchange of goods and gifts for labor or indigenous collaboration in some enterprise, promises of mutual defense, veiled or explicit threats among others. It explores how the state of war between Portugal and the Dutch West Indies Company influenced the relations between Europeans and Indians on the northern captaincies of Brazil and, specially, how the Indians from Ceará positioned themselves toward the warring factions. It establishes how the Indian rebellion of 1644, when the Dutch garrison in Ceará was massacred, was the result of tensions between the Company and the local indigenous peoples over the exploitation of Indians as laborer and warriors, and how it was representative of a general crisis between the indigenous peoples and the Company in Dutch Brazil as a whole.