Direito à terra e sesmarias a indígenas na América Portuguesa: estudo de caso sobre a formação de títulos "no pé da serra do Pitavary” (1683-1722)

Abstract

Indigenous people played an essential role in the conquest and colonization of the Portuguese American regions. However, these subjects were sometimes presented as secondary characters in the social and legal order of colonial society, seen as passive victims of a tutelary reality that did not allow them to act in their own interests. The present work, in this sense, intends to understand the participation of indigenous people in the formation of land titles during the occupation of the Capitania do Siará Grande by means of a specific case: grants of sesmarias to indigenous people in the region around the “Serra do Pitavary”. For this purpose, we analyzed sesmarial records, between the years 1683 and 1722, in the books of “Datas de Sesmarias”, available at the Public Archive of the State of Ceará (APEC), with the support of the juridical and historiographical literature about the region. It was found that the indigenous people who lived in that region acted by petitioning the Captain-Major of the captaincy, requesting land based on the bonds created with the colonizing figures and the need for subsistence, supposedly guaranteed through the land titles. From the results, it can be concluded that the indigenous people of the Capitania do Siará Grande did not limit themselves only to subordination to the tutelary regime of the colonial order, but they appropriated this regime in their speeches and requests to safeguard authentic rights and interests, in this case the protection of the land.