susan sleeper-smith contesting knowledge museums and indigenous perspectives 2009

8/9/2019 Susan Sleeper-Smith Contesting Knowledge Museums and Indigenous Perspectives 2009

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Chaptertitle

contesting knowledge


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contesting


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Edited by Susan Sleeper-Smith

knowledge

University o Nebraska Press | Lincoln and London

Museums and Indigenous Perspectives


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© 2009 by the Board o Regents o the

University o Nebraska. All rights

reserved. Manuactured in the United

States o America.

Acknowledgments or the previous

publication o material included

herein appear at the end o the

respective chapters, which constitute

an extension o the copyright page.

Publication o this volume was assisted

by a grant rom Michigan State Uni-

versity.

Library o Congress Cataloging-in-

Publication Data

Contesting knowledge : museums and

indigenous perspectives / edited by

Susan Sleeper-Smith.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical reerences

and index.isbn 978-0-8032-1948-9 (pbk. : alk.

paper)

1. Ethnological museums and collec-

tions. 2. Indians— Museums.

3. Indian museum curators— At-

titudes. 4. Museums— Acquisi-

tions— Moral and ethical aspects.

5. Museum exhibits— Moral and ethi-

cal aspects. 6. Museums— Collectionmanagement. 7. Racism in museum

exhibits. 8. Indians in popular culture.

9. Indigenous peoples in popular cul-

ture. I. Sleeper-Smith, Susan.

gn35.c64 2009

305.80074— dc22

2009002209

Set in Minion Pro by Kim Essman.Designed by A. Shahan.


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o President Lou Anna K. Simon, whose

enduring support o American Indian Studies

has created an inclusive, caring environment

or Michigan State University students

and aculty. And to the CIC (Committee on

Institutional Cooperation) Liberal Arts andLetters Deans or their generous support

in unding the CIC–American Indian Studies

Consortium. Tank you.


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5. A Dialogic Response to the Problematized Past:Te National Museum o the American Indian 133

.

6. West Side Stories: Te Blending o Voice andRepresentation through a Shared Curatorial Practice 156

.

7. Huichol Histories and erritorial Claims inwo National Anthropology Museums 192

8. Te Construction o Native Voice at the National

Museum o the American Indian 218

: ribal Museums and the Heterogeneity of the Nation-State

Creation o the ribal Museum 251 .

9. si niyukwaliho t , the Oneida Nation Museum:Creating a Space or Haudenosaunee Kinship andIdentity 257

10. Reimagining ribal Sovereignty through ribalHistory: Museums, Libraries, and Archives in theKlamath River Region 283

11. Responsibilities toward Knowledge: Te Zuni Museumand the Reconciling o Different Knowledge Systems 303

12. Museums as Sites o Decolonization: ruth elling inNational and ribal Museums 322

339

345


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Illustrations

1. Te eastern sertão o Brazil, Minas Gerais, ca. 1800 16 2. Saskatchewan, Canada 157

3. Huichol kiekari, Mexico 195

1. Beaded smoked hide vest on display at Dieenbaker

Canada Centre 174 2. Detail o Batoche by Christi Belcourt 175 3. York boat on display at Dieenbaker Canada Centre 176 4. Marian Shrine replica at Dieenbaker Canada Centre 178

5. Replica o cabin at Dieenbaker Canada Centre 179 6. Riel genealogy display at Dieenbaker Canada Centre 180 7. Samples o innity beadwork at Dieenbaker

Canada Centre 182 8. ukipa (temple) in uapurie (Santa Catarina

Cuexcomatitlán) 209 9. Part o the Chicago community exhibit panels in

the Our Lives gallery, 2004 220 10. View o First Floor East Hall, Museum o the American

Indian 225 11. Closed but visible Polar Eskimo exhibit at the National

Museum o Natural History, 2004 228 12. Entrance o the 230 13. Te longhouse (Kanúses néka ik ) located just outside the

Oneida Nation Museum 258


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Chaptertitle

contesting knowledge


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1

Contesting Knowledge Museums and Indigenous Perspectives

-

At the time o European encounter, the rst residents o the Americas

were divided into at least 2,000 cultures. Te original inhabitants o theWestern Hemisphere did not conceive o themselves as one or even severalnations. Most people knew very little about distant communities —aware-ness was ofen circumscribed by kin and trade networks. Consequently,because Indigenous peoples did not possess a collective vision o them-selves, the idea o the Indian or Indians emerged as a white image or ste-reotype. Indians became a single entity or the purposes o descriptionand analysis. Simultaneously, by categorizing all Indigenous people as Indians, thenewcomers downplayed the differences between Indigenous peoples, lead-ing to a centuries-long conusion and a melding o undamentally incor-rect ways o understanding human societies. When Columbus appliedthe term Indian to people in the Caribbean, its use became embedded innarratives o encounter and has continued to the present day. Even earlyeyewitness accounts that described a specic tribe or community weregeneralized and ofen evolved as descriptive o all Indians. Present-daypeople who use the word Indian have little idea o the diversity o culturesand o tribal communities that this term encompasses. Global expansion created new notions about human nature and em-bedded knowledge: about the types o societies that met across this stageo encounter in a wealth o objects that were collected rom “oreign”cultures and transported to Europe. Many objects were received throughthe traditional exchange o goods; and, like written narratives, these ob-

jects were displayed as a way o telling stories about Indians. Museums,like literary texts, were also purposeully constructed to tell stories about


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Western, rather than Indigenous, society. When the objects collected or“cabinets o curiosity” were moved rom the private to the public sphere,they visually reinorced the stereotypes associated with Indians. Notionsabout the “primitive” nature o Indian society inuenced what was col-lected and how it was displayed. Most requently, Indigenous peoples weredescribed in terms o deciencies. Consequently, Indians were measuredagainst the ideals o Western society; and whether describing belies, val-ues, or institutions, they were measured against the institutions that West-ern society most cherished about themselves at the time. Te public museum became a meeting ground or official and ormal

versions o the past. Because history was constructed through objects,

curators created the interpretative context or each object. Objects thatwere placed in museums were initially decontextualized and made to tellan evolutionary narrative about the progress o Western societies andthe primitiveness o Indigenous communities. Museums unctioned aspowerul rhetorical devices that created dominant and ofen pathologi-cal allegiances to a cultural ideal. In the rst section o this volume, RaySilverman shows how these essays explore stereotypes about Indigenouspeople who shaped the early period o contact. In both Brazil and South

Arica, violence was perpetuated against Native peoples and “just wars”were rationalized as a means o imposing a “civilized” order on Indige-nous space. For instance, the inscription o “primitive” behaviors, whichdescribed Indigenous people as cannibals, raises important issues abouthow public exhibition space unctioned. In displays o human beings asobjects, we see how Aricans were not silenced even when they allowedthemselves to be exhibited. As Zine Magubane tells us,

Tose denied the opportunity to express themselves verbally used theirbodies, acial expressions, and other nonverbal orms o communica-tion to show that they were sentient beings who knew how humiliat-ing their circumstance was and who wished to live differently. Tosewho mastered the language and mores o English society were moredirect. Tey challenged the supremacy o English culture and values.Tey demonstrated their awareness o the shortcomings o English so-

ciety. And they, like their silenced brethren, insisted on the necessityo independence and sel-determination. Others chose the path o si-


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Contesting Knowledge 3

lence —showing their displeasure through a deliberate reusal to en-gage. And still others, like Ota Benga, chose death.

In the Western exhibition o colonized people, the Indigenous voice couldnot be silenced. Initially, there were no Indigenous museums that de-scribed the horrors associated with colonization. As Jacki Rand pointsout, in the second section o this volume, it was only in the mid-twen-tieth century that Indigenous people were invited to share power withmuseum proessionals. Museums that sought Indigenous consultationencouraged Native people to make a case or their own humanity and toeducate others about ties to ancestral lands. Te ounding o the National

Museum o the American Indian made an attempt to speak directly to theproblematized space o public museums and to the troubled relationshipbetween Native and non-Native people. While the National Museum othe American Indian (nmai) aspires to a mutually interactive voice thatincorporates the museum’s proessional staff and Native collaborators, the viability o that partnership has ofen been problematic. Te central loca-tion o the museum on the mall has transormed the Indian into a promi-nent public gure, but ofen the incorporation o multiple storylines into

one narrative has constrained the multiplicity o those voices that createthose narratives. In section three, Brenda Child describes the dramatic contrast betweenthe National Museum o the American Indian and the movement towardthe creation o tribal museums. ribal museums represent one o the mosteffective ways o serving diverse communities. Each Indigenous nationpossesses a distinct historical tradition, and it is the tribal museum thatembodies Indigenous perspectives and serves the more varied needs oindividual communities. ribal museums unction as preservation proj-ects that teach traditional narratives and lieways and, above all, servethe needs o the individual communities. Educating the broader publicremains part o the tribal museum project, although it is no longer at theheart o these newer museums. Te last section o this volume is devoted to exploring how tribal mu-seums have changed since the early days o the 1960s and 1970s. As the

beneciaries o enhanced public awareness and changing educational pri-orities, they have increasingly unctioned as both museums and centers


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o community lie. All o these museums are remarkable because in theirdiversity they testiy to the ongoing revitalization o Native lie.

Many o the changes that are apparent in the museums across NorthAmerica are also evident across the global landscape. Te demand to cre-ate alternative narratives and to give orce to ormerly colonized peoplesparallels the same issues that have evolved in Indian Country. Indigenousmuseums ounded within communities remind us that colonized land-scapes were once the homelands o these oppressed peoples. While muse-ums may have emerged as part o the original colonial project, they havebeen put to new purposes. Teir reinvention parallels the changes that

are taking place in Indian Country. Whether it is South Arica or all oArica, Mexico and Brazil or all o South America, Indigenous people areusing museums to emerge rom invisibility and to deconstruct the coloni-zation narrative rom the viewpoint o the oppressed. At the heart o theseprojects is a multiplicity o voices, a variety o narratives, and the use omuseums as tools o revitalization. While techniques vary, the ability toconstruct meaningul narratives, dened by a variety o perspectives, hasled to a global surge in the number o tribal museums.

Tese chapters were presented as papers on September 24, 2007, at theNewberry Library as part o the CIC/Newberry Library American In-dian Studies Fall Symposium entitled Indigenous Past and Present: FirstAnnual Symposium, Contesting Knowledge: Museums and IndigenousPerspectives. Te symposium was organized and supported by the CIC–American Indian Studies Consortium. Te CIC–AIS Consortium ac-ulty are drawn rom the Big en universities and the University o Chi-cago, and they share an interest in American Indian Studies. Tis poolo CIC aculty relies on the consortium to oster aculty research and toshare in the training o graduate students. CIC aculty teach workshops,seminars, and encourage networking across the graduate student bodythrough the annual spring graduate conerence. Additional inormationabout the CIC–AIS Consortium is located on their website: http://www.msu.edu/~cicaisc.

Tis symposium has been supported by theCIC

–Liberal Arts and Sci-ences Deans and their support has generously been supplemented by


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Contesting Knowledge 5

the administration o the Michigan State University campus. Our sin-cere thanks to Dean Karen Klomparens, the dean o Graduate Studies;Paulette Granberry Russell, the director and senior advisor to the presi-dent or diversity; Kim Wilcox, the provost o Michigan State University;Doug Estry, office o the associate provost or undergraduate education;and Ian Gray, vice president or research and development.


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1Ethnography and

the Cultural Practices

o Museums


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9

Te Legacy o Ethnography

Te our essays included in this section address a range o subjects as-sociated with museums and heritage; they each in one way or another

consider how Indigenous peoples have been represented in a variety ocultural and historical settings — in the archive, in the “ethnographic the-ater,” and in the museum. Te essays offer a variety o historical and in-stitutional contexts or (re)presenting Indigenous culture, and as a groupthey raise a number o questions that oreground issues germane to virtu-ally all papers delivered at the symposium. As such, they help rame ourcritical discourse concerning the role o the museum in (re)presentingIndigenous pasts and presents.

Te thread that binds these our seemingly disparate essays togetheris how ethnography has inuenced European modes o representing thepeople whom they colonized. Ethnography has provided the “scientic”

justication or much o the colonial project in the Americas and in A-rica. Te strategy emerged two hundred years ago and persists to thisday — it is a mode o thinking that has proven difficult to shake off andcontinues to inuence how Indigenous peoples are represented in muse-ums and related cultural institutions.

Hal Langur’s essay ocuses not on museums but on the archive. Hecritically examines how the accounts o early nineteenth-century Euro-pean naturalists and other travelers who encountered Brazil’s Indigenouspeoples, specically the Botocudo, were used to construct a very specicimage o these peoples as “quintessential primitives.” In these accounts,emphasis was placed on reerences to cannibalism, as perhaps the mostpoignant evidence o Botocudo savagery. Langur argues that this method

o writing and reading ethnography not only served to rationalize the co-lonial project in Brazil but also provided the oundation or how Brazil’s


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Indigenous peoples would be represented in the nation’s rst museums,archives, and historical societies. Although Langur ocuses primarily on written accounts, one mightsuspect that the artiacts that these nineteenth-century ethnographerscollected reinorced popular European perceptions o Native Americansas primitive and savage. Te situation in nineteenth-century Brazil is not unlike colonial en-counters in other parts o the world. Contemporary travel accounts oEuropeans visiting North America, Arica, and the Pacic Islands are re-plete with such imagery. Tis “data” ueled various European ideologies,including social Darwinism, and offered the justication to subjugate and

reorm the “primitive.” Indeed, this mode o representation was centralto the civilizing mission o Europe well into the twentieth century. Zine Magubane’s essay examines another dimension o this phenom-enon: the theatrical display o Aricans in Europe and the United Statesin the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Te essay ocuses on theethnographic showcase — theatrical perormances involving individualswho were brought, supposedly o their own ree will, rom Arica to Eu-rope and the United States, where they were exhibited as exotic ethno-

graphic specimens. Tese perormances were, in effect, “human zoos.”Other venues or exhibiting Aricans in this manner included world’sairs and expositions. Tese displays were predicated on the popular un-derstanding o the “science” o ethnology but, as Magubane points out,went ar beyond science and education, ofen assuming the character oa commercial reak show staged or the amusement o the masses. Onceagain, such exhibits can be seen as a maniestation o the colonial proj-ect. Magubane observes, “the popularity o ethnographic showcases andthe progress o the British Empire were always closely linked.” In addition to describing the nature o human exhibits, Magubane be-gins to examine evidence that counters the prevalent understanding thatthose who appeared in these “theatrical” settings were passive, acquiescentindividuals. Here, the careul reading o the archive reveals that individu-als such as Saartjie Baartman (South Arica) and Ota Benga (Congo), inact, were not complacent victims but conronted and resisted the “han-

dlers” who exploited them. Tis is a line o inquiry that deserves a greatdeal more attention.


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Part Introduction 11

Evidence that this mode o representation still persists appears in the

presentation o Aricans in zoos in Europe and North America. Still ex-

oticized as people who live close to nature, as they always have, Aricans

living in “villages” are now integrated with displays o Arican animalsin zoos around the world. Once again, “ethnographic authenticity” is in-

voked as the rationale or developing such exhibits, thus reinorcing long-

held, distorted stereotypes o Aricans. However, such practices do not

go unnoticed. Recent events at zoos in Augsberg in Germany and Seattle

in the United States have sparked local debates concerning the propriety

o such representations.

Te critique o another mode o ethnography is the subject o Ann

McMullen’s essay, in which she reexamines the work o George GustavHeye, the man whose collection o 700,000 artiacts serves as the core

collection (85 percent) o the National Museum o the American Indian

(nmai). Te essay does not deal much with the representation o Native

American culture but ocuses on how Heye himsel has been represented

in and by museums. Te custom in the nmai has been to treat his mem-

ory with considerable ambivalence. He is ofen dismissed as “just a crazy

white man” with an indiscriminate penchant or acquiring Indian arti-acts. McMullen engages the archive in an attempt to set Heye in a more

objective light, to understand the man’s motivations or building his huge

collection, and to place his collecting methods in a historical context.

Te primary rationale or Heye’s collecting activities was the “salvag-

ing” o traditions that were perceived as disappearing —a strategy cham-

pioned by anthropologists o his day such as Franz Boas. But what ex-

actly was salvaged? McMullen relates how Heye sent his agents into the

eld to purchase objects, ofen with little attention paid to properly doc-umenting the provenance or cultural context o the objects. What then

is the National Museum o the American Indian going to do with all this

material? At present, the museum’s curators are using objects primarily

as props to tell stories about the Americas and their Indigenous peoples,

past and present. Do the objects themselves have any stories to tell? In

some cases cultural memory still exists pertaining to the meaning these

objects had when they were rst collected, but this is more the exceptionthan the rule. Teir value today lies primarily in the conversations that


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occur around the objects, and the new meanings that are ascribed to them.

Everything Heye collected that now serves as the tangible core o thenmai

presents something o a paradox. How will it be used? What meaning

do all these things hold or societies, such as those o Native Americans,that or the most part do share the same values with Euro-American so-

ciety concerning the preservation o material objects but that also place

greater value in preserving the intangible traditions with which the ob-

jects are associated? Te situation in which the nmai currently nds itsel

raises an interesting question, one that aces many museums that are at-

tempting to (re)present local Indigenous tradition. Is the concept o the

object-centered museum an appropriate model or representing Native

American culture and history? A related issue that is raised tangentially in McMullen’s essay is a theme

that appears in several o the essays presented in this volume. Tis con-

cerns the nmai’s struggle to deliver on the expectations that it set or itsel.

McMullen cites a report that she authored hersel in 2006, which states

that the nmai strives to become an “international center that represents

the totality [my emphasis] o Native experiences,” apparently or all Na-

tive peoples o the Western Hemisphere. How does a museum accomplishthis, especially as a government-supported national institution, a national

museum representing hundreds o nations?

Tis is not a problem unique to the nmai. At the Arican International

Council o Museums (africom) meeting, held in Cape own, South A-

rica, in October 2006, a major topic o conversation concerned decoloniz-

ing the museum. One response to the issue that is particularly poignant

came rom the director o the National Museums o Kenya, Dr. Idle Omar

Farah. He suggests that not until Arican museums are economically inde-pendent —that is, they do not have to rely on support rom Europe —will

they be able to shake off colonial or neocolonial agendas that still drive a

good deal o what goes on in Arican museums. As part o the Smithso-

nian, can the nmai be decolonized?

Te ourth essay, written by Ciraj Rassool, directly conronts this issue

by arguing that, despite having moved into a postcolonial era, museums

still struggle with how ormerly colonized peoples are represented. Tisis because museums continue to employ exhibit strategies grounded in


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Part Introduction 13

colonial legacies, specically those associated with ethnology and eth-

nography. Rassool’s discussion, situated in postapartheid South Arica,

reveals that the identity and community politics lying at the heart o her-

itage debates are shared among Indigenous peoples around the world. Adiorama displaying Khoisan lie installed at Iziko, the National Museum o

South Arica, has been the source o considerable debate or decades —still

unresolved, it raises many o the same issues concerning Native Ameri-

can dioramas installed in natural history museums in the United States.

Similarly, there is a good deal o resonance here in the United States with

challenges that Iziko aces pertaining to i and how it should represent In-

digenous culture. Teir struggle is not unlike that currently experienced

in our large metropolitan museums that represent Native American peo-ples. Te same holds true or issues concerning the repatriation o human

remains.

Rassool presents the work o the District Six Museum in Cape own

as an example o an institution that has made considerable progress in

redressing the injustices o the apartheid era and approaching “issues

o community, restitution, and social healing in ways that give a non-

racial and anti-racist character to its museum methods.”1

Te success othe District Six Museum reveals that it is in local community-centered

museums —not national museums —that the most innovative and exciting

work is being undertaken. New modes o representation are being created

that offer a means or conronting history and establishing a place or the

individual and community in today’s national and global societies.

Another dimension o the District Six Museum that is worth noting

is that it represents a very successul partnership between a community

and the academy. Ciraj Rassool has played an active role in the DistrictSix community, specically in the work o its museum. He has brought

his knowledge o social and political theory to the museum and, in turn,

has learned rom the expertise o the various community members who

have been involved in museum-related activities. Tis partnership is a tes-

timony to the value o public scholarship —a model worth emulating.

Rassool’s essay demonstrates the degree to which the challenges o rep-

resentation o Indigenous, ormerly disenranchised, peoples are sharedbetween North American and South Arican culture workers. It also


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makes apparent the potential benets o comparative and collaborativework relating to the representation o people and culture in museums.

Notes 1. Ciraj Rassool, “Abstract o Paper or the First Annual Symposium: Contesting

Knowledge; Museums and Indigenous Perspectives,” paper presented at the New-

berry Library, Chicago, September 24, 2007.


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15

Elite Ethnography andCultural Eradication

Conronting the Cannibal in

Early Nineteenth-Century Brazil

When Prince Regent João declared war against the Indigenous inhabit-ants o Brazil’s eastern orests in 1808, cannibalism served as the princi-pal basis or deeming the military action legal and just. From the onseto Portugal’s colonization o the Atlantic coastline between Salvador daBahia and Rio de Janeiro in the sixteenth century, native peoples who in-habited the inland mountains and river valleys were targeted or violent

conquest on the same moral grounds. Te coastal upi-speaking peopleswere similarly condemned or consuming their enemies, but they did soor ritual purposes only. Teir conduct could be altered, many church andsecular authorities thought, through conversion to Christianity and hardwork in the burgeoning sugar-plantation economy. Te inland speakerso Gê-based languages, by contrast, ate people or basic sustenance, col-onists believed. Known variously as the apuia, the Aimoré, and by themid-eighteenth century the Botocudo, these Indians were considered ex-

ceptionally savage. As a rule, plans or the colonization o the territoryoccupied by these highly mobile hunters and gatherers ocused on theiright or eradication. Te climactic violent conrontation between set-tlers and the various ethnic groups o the eastern orests escalated wellbeore the declaration o a “just war” in 1808. Afer prospectors in the1690s discovered gold and, later, diamonds arther inland in the regionthat became the captaincy o Minas Gerais, the Portuguese Crown placed

the coastal orests off-limits. By banning exploration and settlement, theCrown sought to deend the mining district rom potential outside in-


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1. Te eastern sertão o Brazil, Minas Gerais, ca. 1800. (All boundary lines are ap-proximations and were disputed.) Map by Susan Long.

FPO


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Elite Ethnography and Cultural Eradication 17

truders and to stanch the ow o untaxed contraband through the oreststo smugglers waiting along the coast. During the second hal o the eigh-teenth century, as many o the most accessible mineral washings waned,occupants o the mining district began to challenge this prohibition withincreasing insistence, ofen supported by captaincy authorities. As theysearched or alternative sources o gold or simply or more land or arm-ing and ranching, they had new reasons to eye the coastal orests to theeast. Known in Minas Gerais as the eastern sertão (backlands), these or-ests became the site o intense conict between colonists and the Boto-cudo, the Puri, the Pataxó, and other groups. I these purported canni-bals had once served royal interests by discouraging access to the orested

no-man’s-land, their continued dominance by the nal decades o thecolonial era seemed intolerable. Te 1808 military mobilization signaledthe Crown’s adoption o a policy o violent conquest that had long sinceemerged at the captaincy level.1

Charges o cannibalism tended to prolierate at such moments o greatantagonism. Tis correlation alone reminds us to exercise extreme cau-tion in accepting such accusations at ace value. Present-day scholars whoret over this problem, which extends ar beyond Brazil to innumerable

colonial battlegrounds where Indigenous peoples stood accused o hei-nous crimes, are ar rom the rst to do so.2 In the immediate afermatho the 1808 war, a cadre o European naturalists descended on the east-ern orests to study this region and its natives, who were then, or therst time, accessible to scientic or at least quasi-scientic investigation.Tese early ethnologists took particular interest in veriying the practiceo cannibalism. As might be expected, they came to no consensus, eitherwith respect to its pervasiveness or its objective characteristics. My intention in this chapter is not to revisit this debate but to explorea related issue: how authorities, both civil and scientic, both Brazilianand oreign, responded when they had no doubt that the Indians theysought to eliminate, paciy, or study ate other humans. Te chapter ex-plores the case o an obscure rontier official who thought cannibalismcould be countered with shhooks and glass beads, ollowed by the coun-terexample o his superiors who opted or war. Discussion then turns to a

European ethnographer, probably more directly involved in the conictthan any other, who ound the state’s response to cannibalism as appall-


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18

ing as the practice itsel. His position prompted a radical proposal thatstate officials learn to think and act more like the man-eaters they soughtto subjugate. Te divergent approaches o these individuals to what they consideredto be quintessential savagery suggest a simple proposition: the transor-mation o tangible interethnic conict into abstract ethnographic knowl-edge involved a process that was more complicated and contradictorythan we perhaps suspect. Beore we can conclude that we know whatelite characterizations o native cultures meant, condent that we un-derstand elite intentions, we have a great deal more work to do in the ar-chives. Only by exploring the relationships between Indigenous practice,

personal ambition, official intent, and scientic ndings will we improveour understanding o the production o knowledge eventually enshrinedin institutions charged with presenting Indigenous cultures in the publicsphere.

In the Atlantic Forest

Te rst encounter with cannibals that I wish to examine involves amidlevel rontier official who was based in northeastern Minas Gerais.

At the beginning o the nineteenth century, José Pereira Freire de Mouraheaded the small Indian aldeia (village) o ocoiós, located along the up-per Jequitinhonha River in a region then covered by the Atlantic orest.3 At the time, ocoiós lay at the outer reaches o settlement in Minas Gerais.o the east, beyond the village, the Jequitinhonha River plunged into theorest, descending through rugged, mountainous terrain and spilling intothe Atlantic Ocean north o Porto Seguro, not ar rom the site wherePedro Álvares Cabral rst anchored off the Brazilian coast in 1500. Goldhad been discovered in the area no later than the 1720s by bandeirantes (backwoodsmen) rom São Paulo. Colonization o the surrounding orestsstalled, however, in part because o resistance rom the region’s semino-madic Indigenous peoples. Settlers moved in with greater impetus in theearly nineteenth century, anning out rom the declining central miningdistrict, attracted to the area by the spread o cotton cultivation.4

As administrator o the nascent aldeia, Moura became preoccupied

by a series o encounters with an elusive group o highly mobile Indians,which he identied as a band o Botocudo. Tese encounters occurred as


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they approached them with the help o an Indian translator who had been

brought to the area rom the Doce River basin to the south. Tey invited

the reputed cannibals to join them on the island in order to receive the

manuactured tools. At rst the Indians proved to be wary. A member otheir band, described as black skinned, unlike the others, warned them

to suspect a ruse. Tey would be captured and killed, just as members o

his amily had once been murdered by whites. Afer some delay, lured by

assurances rom the troops, the others ignored the warning and crossed

to the island on canoes.

Corporal Prates then urged the Botocudo to return upriver some twenty

leagues (about 130 kilometers) to ocoiós. Tey consented, reaching the

aldeia ahead o the troops. As head o the settlement, Moura welcomedthem with “all due kindness and riendship,” distributing more gifs. Over

the course o the next two years, the Indians returned or urther visits.

Ten, mysteriously, they disappeared. Prates led orest patrols every year

or three consecutive years in an attempt to contact the Indians, but they

were not to be ound. Moura suspected that they were purposeully avoid-

ing contact, because resh signs o their presence in the orest were always

evident. Tey likely remained hidden as a response to the increasing mo-bilization or the declared war that was then underway.

Moura had personal reasons or his accommodating approach to the

Indians o the Jequitinhonha River valley, reasons which involved three

generations o his amily. He was orchestrating a plan that stood little

chance o success without the cooperation o the Botocudo, a plan that

rst emerged when he discovered an undated document among the pa-

pers o his deceased ather. Te document described a route down the

Jequitinhonha River and then overland through the dense orests to aplace described as Lagoa Dourada, the Golden Lagoon. Like an account

o El Dorado or a map o buried treasure, imbued with the same potential

to inspire dreams o undiscovered riches, the document was a signed, rst

person description o an expedition manned by bandeirantes rom São

Paulo. Tese men had wandered through the region, probably more than

a century beore, and uncovered evidence o ample gold deposits, which

they had not had the time or wherewithal to unearth. Moura wished toretrace their steps, but increasing age and inrmity prevented him rom


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doing so. He next sought to mount an expedition, to be led by one o hissons, in search o the Golden Lagoon.6

Tis quest would entail descending the Jequitinhonha River in canoesto a point where wateralls made it impassable. Te troops would thenmarch overland, making contact with various ractured ethnic groupsknown to be living in the area. Moura described these groups as the “re-mains o nations . . . eeing their total destruction” in raids launched byBotocudo rom the Doce River basin to the south, the most violent the-ater o the war. Moura remained convinced o the merits o attractingthe Botocudo rather than attacking them, despite their amed hostility,not the least because the stakes were so high or him personally. Te re-

gion he was attempting to explore, he wrote, “always was the one mostexposed to invasions by the Botocudo.” Although he had managed to winthe riendship o some, they could easily launch a “treasonous” attack ithey sensed weakness or became dissatised. “In this case,” he explained,“I and my amily will be the rst ones sacriced.”7

o ensure the success o his plan, Moura sought permission rom thehighest authorities in Brazil. He sent a second son to Rio de Janeiro, car-rying a letter addressed to the venerable count o Linhares, Rodrigo de

Souza Coutinho, the royal minister o war. He explained that his increas-ing knowledge o the unsettled orests, a consequence o his efforts to in-teract with the natives, had convinced him that “great wealth” could beound i the expedition he proposed were allowed to ollow the old itin-erary. For this reason, he asked the war minister to appeal to the mon-arch himsel. In Rio de Janeiro Moura’s son would purchase powder, shot,iron, and other supplies or the expedition, including a stock o quin-quilharias (tries), the term customarily used to describe gifs that wereconsidered by settlers to be o little value —mirrors, beads, ribbons, orexample —but useul or appeasing wary natives. Te expedition couldbe resupplied rom the coast i necessary, since Moura gauged that theold route would place the explorers closer to the sea than to the settledinterior o Minas Gerais. In addition to nancial support, Moura soughta series o orders rom the prince regent, requiring both the governor oMinas Gerais, Pedro Maria Xavier Ataíde e Melo (1803–1810), and other

officials to cooperate.8

Te text o Moura’s letter made it clear that he had been stymied by


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22

the standard chain o command, ascending through local military offi-cers to the governor. Moura sought to circumvent those he suspected ooiling his attempt to locate the site. For starters, royal backing would al-low him to round up recruits, by orce i necessary, and press them intoservice. His efforts would bear ruit, he wrote the war minister, only “iYour Excellency would be kind enough to lend your authority in order toremove the obstacles that might impede me.” With such support, he pre-dicted his mission would be o “great utility” to the Crown’s vassals andits treasury.9

Te existing evidence suggests that an expedition o substantial sizeeventually did set out rom the distant rontier outpost where Moura

dreamed o untapped gold. Another note he drafed listed more thanthree dozen men whom he designated as participants, some o them beingidentied as “prisoners.” He had asked the district military commanderto place these individuals under his command. An unsigned document,also apparently written by Moura, contains orders that had been issuedto his son, detailing instructions or leading a bandeira, or wildernessexpedition. Te orders indicated that the men were expected to spendsix months or more in the orest. Tey also stipulated that the expedi-

tion must “never attack the Indians without previous provocation romthem.” Teir “good treatment” was to be guaranteed by the distributiono machetes, shhooks, knives, and trinkets. Te Botocudo were even tobe invited to join the expedition, i possible. Te document makes reer-ence to a separate order issued by the prince regent to purchase supplies.Te evidence, i incomplete, suggests that Moura succeeded in his effort tosway the Crown to accommodate his attempt to placate cannibals ratherthan kill them.10

Given the main currents o state Indigenous policy at the time, this wasno small achievement. Elsewhere in the eastern orests, the monarch car-ried on with his declared war, a paradox that serves to emphasize the is-sue that most concerns me here: accusations o cannibalism and savagerycould be used by colonists and the state or a ull range o purposes, in-cluding those that were diametrically opposed. It is important to recog-nize the extent to which this rontier official’s approach was distinctive,

which is not to say unique since there were always others who avoredcultural accommodation. Given his immediate and gruesome experience


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o cannibalism, Moura could have been impelled to judge the Indians tobe irredeemable, candidates or enslavement or extermination in accor-dance with prevailing Crown and captaincy policies. Tis was not the case.Convinced that he was negotiating with man-eaters, Moura proceededto attempt to woo them into the village that he administered. He thoughtit was no great leap o aith to insist that with patience and persistencesuch natives could be gradually assimilated. While labeling Indians ascannibals may have always served the colonial project, Moura’s approachdemonstrates that more specic objectives differed according to individ-ual colonists, including officials committed, as he was, to loyal service tothe Crown. Tat Moura, who lived closer than most to the source o war-

time ear and conict, could react with equanimity to what he deemed tobe irreutable proo o Botocudo cannibalism should caution us againstassuming that we automatically know the implications o the impulse torepresent Indians as devourers o human esh.

At the Centers o Power

During the years in which Moura labored at ocoiós, Indian resistanceto conquest intensied to match a growing state commitment to coloni-

zation. Writing to the governor o Minas Gerais in 1807, Diogo Ribeirode Vasconcelos, a Portuguese-born member o the local elite who occu-pied numerous high government posts, called or the river valleys andorests to the east o the mining district to be opened to navigation anddenitively settled. Recognizing that barriers both “moral and physical”stood in the way, Vasconcelos nevertheless urged the captaincy governorto move aggressively. “Incalculable are the advantages in terms o exportsand imports that can come to the captaincy by way o navigation” o therivers linking Minas Gerais to the coast, he argued. “Apart rom com-merce, we would equally obtain the vast riches that cover those lands.”Unortunately, travel through the area remained blocked by the “hostili-ties o cannibals,” which could be countered once and or all only with“sufficient military orce.”11

Te inuence o men like Vasconcelos, a resident o Vila Rica, the cap-taincy capital, helps explain why Moura’s pursuit o patient interactions

with the Botocudo met with opposition rom his superiors. Vasconce-los was well aware o Moura’s efforts. Beore Moura decided to appeal


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directly to the Crown, Vasconcelos took note o his search or the placewhere “the Paulistas o long ago discovered the gold mines o the GoldenLagoon.” He even reerred to Moura as an able administrator o the aldeiaat ocoiós. Te two men, however, could not have differed more sharplywhen it came to basic strategy concerning the region’s independent In-digenous peoples. Where Moura avored nonviolent interaction basedon the premise o cultural malleability, Vasconcelos pressed or militaryconquest, being convinced o the Indians’ rigid savagery.12

All peaceul methods were doomed, Vasconcelos argued. “Barbarousmen are not persuaded to abandon their customs with iron utensils andglass beads, with bagatelles.” Te practice o establishing state-run Indian

villages would ultimately ail to lure natives out o the orests. Te Boto-cudo were “devourers o animals o their same species, insensible to the

voices o reason and humanity that invite them to participate in society.”Tey should be “hunted down and run through with knives, until suchevils subject the remainder o them to their obligations.” Force would “e-ect what through kindness we have been unable to achieve,” Vasconce-los concluded. “Force is appropriate or men incapable o education andprincipled action.”13

Vasconcelos wrote these heated passages on the eve o the war’s decla-ration. He did so rom rustrated resignation, which he construed to bethe consequence o the reusal o the eastern Indians to accept the com-passionate terms o colonial authority. A sel-appointed captaincy histo-rian, he xed on orce as the only viable solution afer poring over the o-cial records at his disposal. His research turned up royal orders that were“worthy o the pious and enlightened sovereigns that imposed them.” Astring o governors had done their utmost to achieve peaceul relationswith the natives. Even Vasconcelos’s contemporary, the belligerent gov-ernor Melo, had done what he could to apply “kindness in reducing thesavages to the church and state.” All such attempts to “settle the Indiansin aldeias and civilize them” had amounted to nothing. “Tere is no handpowerul enough, no eloquence capable o persuading them to abandontheir ways and the dense woods in which they are born,” Vasconcelos la-mented. “Te cannibal Botocudo does not allow or the conventions o

peace and riendship.” Te only rational response to such savagery, hereasoned, was violence.14


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Such arguments contributed to a hardening o Indigenous policy lead-ing up to the declaration o war. Te war signaled the nal abandonmento the Crown’s longstanding commitment to maintaining the eastern or-est as a orbidden, unsettled zone occupied by hostile Indians. Tis earlierpolicy, which had eroded over the previous decades, was part o the rea-son that Indians had remained so dominant in the region, even though itlay just inland rom the Atlantic coast. Opting or war, the Crown bowedto the pressures o an increasing number o miners, armers, ranchers,and captaincy officials. In the ace o dwindling gold production, they hadorged an incompatible local policy o opening the territory to explora-tion and settlement.15

Te extent and success o Indian resistance to this encroachment provided whatever urther justication Prince Regent João needed to recastroyal Indigenous policy. By his ormulation, it had been Indian aggres-sion alone that orced the declaration o war. Forgotten were decades oprovocative actions by authorities and soldiers as they searched or moregold and diamonds, circumventing royal restrictions. Ignored, too, wasthe slow but persistent advance o settlers as they continued to push east-ward rom the mining district into the coastal orests. Te prince regent

had accepted the view that once-desirable native opposition to the pres-ence o colonists could no longer be sanctioned. He declared war against the Botocudo on May 13, 1808, just threemonths afer arriving in Rio de Janeiro rom Lisbon, where he had beencast into exile by Napoleon’s advancing armies. An uncompromising mil-itary offensive then seemed the only answer to the outcry o those whohad labored unsuccessully to settle the eastern orests. From the mon-arch’s new perspective and geographic position in the colonial capital,these lands stretched northward over a great distance, separating Rio deJaneiro rom the two other most important centers o colonial settlementin Minas Gerais and Bahia. Now it became the monarch’s turn to represent the native cultureso this territory, making meaning and policy out o accusations decry-ing their cannibalism. Addressing his war declaration to Governor Melo,the monarch wrote that his determination to act derived rom “grave

complaints” that had reached the throne about native atrocities. He con-demned the “invasions that the cannibal Botocudos [were] practicing


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daily,” especially along the banks o the Doce River and its tributaries. TeIndians had managed to “devastate all o the azendas located in thoseareas . . . [and] orced many landowners to abandon them at great loss tothemselves and to my royal Crown.” o achieve their ends, they dared toperpetrate “the most horrible and atrocious scenes o the most barbarouscannibalism.” Tey “assassinated” settlers and “tame Indians” alike. TeIndians opened wounds in their victims and drank their blood. Tey dis-membered them and consumed their “sad remains.” Echoing Vasconce-los’s report o the previous year, the monarch maintained that such con-duct demonstrated, once and or all, “the uselessness o all human efforts”to civilize the Botocudo, to settle them in villages, and to persuade them

“to take pleasure in the permanent advantages o a peaceul and gentle so-ciety.” As a consequence, he then declared the end o what he termed his“deensive” policy. He replaced it with one o “just” and “offensive war,” awar that would “have no end,” until settlers returned to their habitationsand the Indians submitted to the rule o law.16

o prosecute the war, the governor was to deploy six detachments ooot soldiers, each responsible or a particular sector o those lands “in-ested” by the Botocudo. Selecting soldiers who were t or such “hard

and rugged” duty, the commanders o these detachments would orm “diverse bandeiras.” Tese wilderness patrols would “constantly, every yearduring the dry season, enter into the orests,” until they had effected the“total reduction o [this] . . . cruel cannibal race.” Armed Indians whowere captured in these actions would be considered prisoners o war andsubject to a ten-year period o enslavement. Although the decree singledout the Botocudo, the governor was to understand that it pertained to the“reduction and civilization . . . o other Indian races,” as well.17

Te wholesale destruction o surviving native cultures in this orestedreuge zone spread rapidly through eastern Minas Gerais, inland EspíritoSanto, and southern Bahia. One European naturalist, who was travel-ing in the area in the immediate afermath o the worst violence, de-scribed the results with unconcealed shock. He observed that “no trucewas granted the Botocudo, who proceeded to be exterminated whereverthey were encountered, without regard to age or sex.” Te war, he wrote,

“was maintained with the greatest perseverance and cruelty, since it wasrmly believed that [the Botocudo] killed and devoured any enemy that


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ell into their hands.” Another observer estimated the number o troopswho were permanently deployed in the eastern sertão at 400 in 1810, al-though 2,000 were reported to have been mustered or one o the war’slargest expeditions.18

Tese developments attest to the limits, during the years immediatelyollowing wartime mobilization, o Moura’s contemporaneous vision ogradual Indian assimilation. Te prince regent had opened his 1808 dec-laration by describing acts o almost unimaginable brutality. In particular,it was cannibalism that made the war legal beyond contention. It was can-nibalism, denounced in the interest o military conquest, that outweighedevidence presented by men like Moura who believed the eastern Indians

could be incorporated by other means. As was perennially the case withsuch accusations by the state, the monarch had little direct evidence tosupport his charge that the Botocudo practiced routine anthropophagy.Only afer the declaration was issued did the war minister order the gov-ernor o Minas Gerais to send to the royal court, under strict security,one Botocudo male and one emale “o the same species” to satisy themonarch’s “curiosity to see this cannibal race.”19 In the past, authoritieshad used the ear o cannibalism to discourage illicit activity by colonists

in the eastern sertão. Te prince regent’s action marked the end o thatera, which had been decades in coming, as changing events transormedperceived Indian savagery rom an asset into an outrage in the minds othose who set policy or the region. Cannibalism came to play its morecustomary role in colonial conquest as a representation o radical alter-ity, a threat to the social order that must be eliminated.20

A Scientist’s View

By 1831, when the war on the Botocudo and other groups officially ended,the military phase o conquest had already given way to less organizedand, importantly, less expensive methods. Eloquent diatribes condemn-ing the use o military orce — including those put orth by José Boniáciode Andrada e Silva, who was the leading statesman o independence-erapolitics, and Baron Wilhelm Ludwig von Eschwege, who was a prominentGerman scientist active in Minas Gerais —had helped secure the Crown’s

sympathy, i not the approval o all settlers and captaincy officials. Bon-iácio amously proposed a more tolerant approach to Brazil’s Indigenous


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Hilaire speculated that many denunciations stemmed rom “the ancienthatred o the Portuguese or the Botocudo, hatred that one supposes hasbeen the origin o more than one calumny.” raveling in northeastern Mi-nas Gerais, he heard more than one story deploring the discovery o hu-man remains. Among these stories was the version Moura had recountedin ocoiós, with certain details altered, about the gnawed bones o run-away slaves. Saint-Hilaire ound such evidence inconclusive. Colonistscould invent tales about any pile o bones; certain Botocudo, moreover,had a vested interest in perpetuating settlers’ worst nightmares.26

Maximilian reached perhaps the most evenhanded conclusion, basedon the greatest amount o inormation. Regarding the Botocudo and Puri,

he wrote that “it is difficult to believe, as some affirm, that they eat humanesh as a matter o preerence.” He pointed out that against such a conclu-sion stood the evidence that they kept alive at least some o the prison-ers they captured. “Tere is no doubt, however, that out o revenge theydevour the esh o their enemies killed in battle.”27 Te German princeoffered additional details: “Te Portuguese . . . universally assert that thePuris east on the esh o the enemies they have killed, and there reallyseems to be some truth in this assertion . . . but they would never coness

it to us. When we questioned them on the subject, they answered that theBotocudos only had this custom. [An English traveler] relates that the In-dians at Canta Gallo ate birds without plucking them. I never saw a sav-age do this; they even careully take out the entrails, and probably hada mind to amuse the English traveller by shewing [sic] him some extra-ordinary trick.”28

Such “tricks” likely gured into reports on eating humans. As had al-ways been the case, the question o cannibalism proved to be a particu-larly effective means o articulating the irreconcilable differences betweencolonists and Indians when the ormer resorted to violence. o the ex-tent that anthropophagy occurred, the practice probably also served thenatives when they sought to underscore such difference or their ownpurposes. Considering the allegations by the Puri about Botocudo con-duct, this seems to have held true not only between the Indians and thePortuguese but also between separate Indigenous groups that were at

odds with one another. Furthermore, some intriguing evidence, includ-ing Maximilian’s assessment o Puri motives in the presence o the Brit-


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more than hal a century earlier and using the name or the Botocudocurrent during an earlier era, he wrote the ollowing about the Aimoré In-dians: Tese Indians “have always caused great harm” to the Portuguese,he related. Tey lived in “inhospitable regions, where they constitute aterriying nation.” In the remote orests, they had orgotten their origi-nal language and devised another to replace it, one that all other nativesound incomprehensible. Tey were “indomitable and savage,” eared evenby other Indians as “erocious animals.” In one instance reminiscent othe story Moura had recounted, a number o Botocudo had been takenprisoner. Behaving like “savage animals in captivity,” they reused all oodand died. Eschwege urther cited the Jesuit text in explaining that the

Botocudo lived “at war with all o the tribes that they encounter,” roam-ing the orests in groups o several dozen bowmen, preerring ambushesto open battles, attacking boldly when their enemies seemed weak, andeeing when they seemed valiant.32

On the subject o cannibalism, Eschwege returned to rsthand ex-perience, speaking o exposing himsel to the “great danger o . . . beingdevoured by the Botocudo.” Although he escaped this ate, it was notwithout seeing “abominable scenes and robust men reduced to slices o

roasted meat.” With evident repugnance, he claimed that he had once seenthis “horrible ood, reshly captured . . . constituted o hands, arms, andlegs, barely scorched and not roasted.”33 As such, the usually meticulousEschwege gathered evidence to support the charge that the eastern Indi-ans ate their enemies; yet these descriptions bore the characteristics noto an eyewitness account but o the repetition o generic images o an-thropophagi that were employed by some Europeans and debunked byothers, since colonization began in the sixteenth century.34

Despite his grim view o the Indians, Eschwege insisted that violentconquest was not the best response. Particularly in unpublished policyprescriptions that were sent directly to officials who were charged withprosecuting the war, he sofened his stance considerably, at times contra-dicting the more lurid descriptions intended or his European readers.He argued that, apart rom their cannibalism, the Botocudo were not aserce as they were held to be and that the military effort should be aimed

not at conquest but at winning their riendship. Tey could be civilizeddespite the dominant view to the contrary, a view to which his harsher


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published observations surely contributed. In his correspondence withBrazilian authorities, by contrast, he placed the current military mobiliza-tion in the context o a long history o “anaticism, ignorance, and cruelty”wrought by the conquerors o the Americas. “o civilize with a sword inhand is a contradiction,” he wrote. “Te Indian has his customs; he hashis religion, whatever it may be, and it is very natural that he deends itwith his lie, as long as he is not persuaded to do the contrary.” What wasrequired was time — time to convince the Botocudo that mutual trust waspossible, that opposing and sharply different peoples could nd commonground. Tey should be lef to live in peace, allowed to practice their owncustoms. Gradually introducing certain luxuries among them would pro-

duce needs that would lead them to civilization, even i such luxuries werealso capable o turning the civilized into barbarians. “Civilization willincrease with necessities to the point that there will be no other remedyexcept to subject onesel voluntarily to our laws.” In a striking rhetoricalourish, he went even urther: progress toward a solution depended onrst convincing the natives that “we ourselves are Botocudos and canni-bals.”35 One can hardly conceive o a statement more prophetic o a latercultural relativism.

Eschwege proceeded to criticize the royal declaration o war againstindividuals who continued to live “in the state o innocence.” He thoughtthe policy o attempting to conquer a territory as vast as the eastern or-ests with a ew hundred soldiers was absurd. Even more ridiculous wasthe idea o populating this region with civilized inhabitants when mucho the rest o Minas Gerais had insufficient population. Te effort wouldonly spread the current settler population even more thinly over the cap-taincy, making it more difficult to govern and less productive, contrib-uting to “the ruin” o the entire region, he warned. o the present point,the war had amounted to a ew divisions o soldiers penetrating twentyor thirty leagues into the orests, killing a dozen or so Botocudo, and re-turning to their barracks. Te policy had served only to exacerbate theIndians’ hostility. Meanwhile, the deployed divisions, as ew and as dis-tant rom one another as they were, provided nothing but a alse sense osecurity to rontier settlers. He argued or a deensive position vis-à-vis

the Botocudo and a halt to new settlement in the area, until troops hadmore success in opening roads and improving navigation.36


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When Eschwege wrote this condemnation o countering cannibals with

military might, the conquest o the rontier remained ar rom complete,

as his assessment attested. Violence between soldiers, settlers, and Indi-

ans persisted into the 1820s and well beyond. In some areas settlers stillearing Botocudo aggression had ailed to push more than two leagues

(thirteen kilometers) into the orests rom the coast, even though maps

o the region then pictured what one cartographer had labeled as the new

“line o orts to repel the Indians.” Subsequent maps drafed as late as the

1860s still characterized extensive swaths o the Eastern Sertão as “un-

settled lands” and “little-known orests inhabited by indigenes.” By the

1880s the great bulk o the estimated remaining twelve to 14,000 Botocudo

were described by a contemporary anthropologist as “still in the savagestate, orming the most numerous and one o the ercest wild tribes in

East Brazil” and still practicing cannibalism. Te Botocudo remained in

control o substantial territory, especially to the north o the Doce River,

until the early twentieth century.37

I cannibalism had once provoked a declaration o war, it ultimately

outlasted the state’s will to prosecute that war. Nearly a decade afer in-

dependence came in 1822, the government unceremoniously revoked thedeclaration in 1831, although the official military offensive had largely

ended by 1811, corresponding with the criticism issued by Eschwege and

others. Milder legislation governing the treatment o the region’s Indians

had been adopted by 1823.38 Te ormation o dozens o hastily established

state-controlled aldeias, like the one Moura supervised at ocoiós, pro-

vided one measure o the disruption that was caused by the war to the

Botocudo, whose population in the region extending rom eastern Mi-

nas Gerais to the coast was estimated at 20,000 individuals during thisperiod. Tese villages brought together natives who had been orced out

o the orests. In exchange or ood, shelter, consumer goods, and pro-

tection rom armed assault, the Indians submitted to the village regime,

which included religious conversion and sedentary agricultural labor. Be-

tween 1800 and 1850 in the area bounded by the Doce and Pardo rivers,

seventy-three o these villages were ormed and ultimately placed under

the centralized administration o the French émigré Guido omás Mar-lière, another orceul critic o the military approach and a colleague o


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Eschwege. Many o these villages would later evolve into townships thatsurvive to this day.39

Tese village Indians served as the primary native sources or the con-clusions drawn by the European naturalists about the nature o the In-digenous cultures o the Atlantic orests. With rare exceptions, in otherwords, these Indians were no longer independent masters o their ownlives; rather, they were splintered, subjugated groups living in close prox-imity to settler society. Colonized and detribalized Indians have gener-ated a ascinating literature o their own, crucial or revising misleadingpreconceptions that permeate the scholarly literature about so-called pureor uncontacted Indians and their allegedly degraded brethren in Euro-

pean-controlled missions, villages, and towns.40

Te point here is not todismiss as worthy subjects the Indians who provided nineteenth-centuryethnologists with inormation but simply to emphasize that their experi-ence should not be mistaken or those who either earlier or concurrentlyled autonomous lives. Tis issue also helps place in proper perspective the work o the Eu-ropean naturalists, who have long provided essential source material orhistorians o Brazil.41 Shaping what came to be known and remembered

about the natives o Brazil’s coastal orests, these authors gathered eth-nographic data o uneven quality, based on rsthand encounters, exist-ing written sources, and, in some cases, mere hearsay. Although theiraccounts generally evinced more interest in Indigenous cultures than doc-uments that were drafed by colonists, they remained highly biased whennot overtly racist, crafed to appeal to an emerging European scienticcommunity as well as to a growing popular audience with an appetite or vicarious oreign adventure. In the transatlantic representation o Brazil-ian Indians as quintessential primitives, these authors succeeded admi-rably. By midcentury, in no less iconic a work than Madame Bovary , orinstance, Gustave Flaubert could mention the Botocudo in passing, as-suming readers would recognize the reerence. At one point in that novel,the pharmacist Monsieur Homais, disturbed by his wie’s unconventionalmethods in raising their children, chastises her with the query, “Do youintend to make Caribs or Botocudos out o them?”42 I know o no scholar

who has tied this passage to Eschwege, although his writings were citedby other prominent European intellectuals such as Goethe and Marx.43


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Flaubert certainly had access to texts by any number o other naturalists

active in nineteenth-century Brazil, including those o his countryman

Saint-Hilaire. While these travelers may have afforded Brazil’s Indians a

degree o renown, their quasi-scientic texts had clear limits when mea-sured as a source o reliable ethnographic evidence.

Published in the orm o travel journals and scientic treatises, these

accounts prooundly inuenced how Brazilian elites thought about the

surviving Indigenous inhabitants o the new nation they aspired to lead

as it achieved independence rom Portugal. Teir ndings, observations,

and opinions permeated discussions on the ounding o the primary in-

stitutions that were responsible or accumulating, codiying, and promul-

gating knowledge concerning Indians. Te most important o these werethe Royal Museum (soon to be called the National Museum or Museu

Nacional) and the Brazilian Historical and Geographic Institute (Insti-

tuto Histórico e Geográco Brasileiro). Both were ounded during the

early nineteenth century in Rio de Janeiro. Te rst was ounded in 1818

by the author o the war declaration, who had by then ascended to the

throne as King João VI; the second, twenty years later under the regency,

which was then ruling the nation. Te European naturalists gathered ar-tiacts and specimens that swelled the museum’s initial holdings, includ-

ing a particularly valuable collection o gems and minerals contributed by

Eschwege. Tey submitted correspondence and other esteemed reports to

the institute. One text, drafed by the Bavarian naturalist Karl Friedrich

Philipp von Martius, won an essay contest sponsored by Emperor Pedro

II, the grandson o João VI, on how best to write the history o Brazil.44

It is beyond the scope o this essay to investigate in greater detail the swaythat was held by individual ethnographers over the institutionalization

o Brazil’s Indigenous past and present. My more modest objective is to

identiy some o the primary currents contributing to this process as it

unolded during the rst hal o the nineteenth century, directly in the

afermath o the war waged against the eastern Indians. However persua-

sive the European experts may have been, their expertise was only part

o a larger context in which the colonial and, later, national state movedorward with efforts to incorporate, by orce when necessary, major re-


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gions that were still controlled by native peoples. Alongside the contri-bution o the emergent scientic community, the openly hostile positiono key members o the Luso-Brazilian elite who were instrumental in thisinstitutionalization process, including the king himsel, must equally beconsidered. Te evidence assembled here also demonstrates that the expert eth-nographers were only the most widely known as opposed to the best-inormed observers o native peoples. On the remote rontier, as directoro the ocoiós aldeia, José Moura had argued that the exchange o provi-sions could lure hunter-gatherers into settled society without resortingto violence. His vision o peaceul accommodation, driven by personal as

much as moral considerations, had not prevailed or the critical periodimmediately ollowing the declaration o war, except in the most limitedo orms. It is perhaps tting that, as ar as the sources reveal, he neveround his Golden Lagoon. Only afer several years o state-sponsored ag-gression did the Crown nally begin to search or an alternative policyas it aced the nancial strain on the royal treasury that had been causedby the war. Te notion o ostering material exchange with natives whowere condemned as cannibals resuraced in the writings o Baron von

Eschwege, among other European naturalists, this time correspondingwith the state’s search or solutions other than its rustrated attempt atmilitary conquest. By way o conclusion, in order to underline the contrasting ways inwhich observers o Indigenous cultures and the state reacted to the radi-cal alterity o the Atlantic orest dwellers, I want to return or a momentto Moura’s encounters with the Botocudo o the Jequitinhonha River val-ley. Several times during 1809, the year ollowing the declaration o war,small groups o a dozen or so natives again made contact with troopsin the orest and with Moura back in his settlement. Tey were alwaystreated hospitably, Moura reported, but he could not keep up with theirdesire or metal tools. Te Indians told him that they planned to return ingreater numbers, that they would bring their children in order to receivemore shhooks and other gifs, and that they ound the aldeia an agree-able dwelling place, particularly since ood was more readily accessible

there than in the orest. Tis exchange concluded with a startling revela-tion: the Botocudo told Moura that “without doubt” they would settle


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permanently at the aldeia i it were possible to convince their wives, whothey said “were very wild and eared they would be killed and eaten.”45

Was there a rm basis or this ear? Would the Botocudo be con-sumed —not just metaphorically — i they entered settled society? Sincetheir ancestors rst came into contact with the Portuguese along Bra-zil’s Atlantic coastline in the sixteenth century, or a span o what nowamounted to three centuries, the Botocudo had witnessed almost everyimaginable act o violence. Tey had been the victims o various officialand unofficial military assaults that were designated as “just wars.” Teyhad been murdered and enslaved. Tey had watched rom the woods asPortuguese soldiers cut off the ears o their allen clansmen as proo o

victory in battle. Tey had seen their women and children marched offto white settlements in a longstanding slave trade that was expandingat precisely the time that Moura was active on the Jequitinhonha River.When these kinolk disappeared, there was ample reason to suspect theworst, especially i Botocudo practices with their own captives matchedthe hideous reports that circulated in the region.46

Apart rom the question o veriable cannibalism is the apparentlyincontestable truth that ears o Portuguese cruelty elicited a ull range

o responses among the native orest dwellers.47

Among these responses,i the statement Moura recorded is to be believed, some Botocudo werestruggling with a dilemma not unlike that o their colonial antagonists.Tey were striving, that is, to convince wary members o their cohort thatthe enemies they had encountered in the orest, while volatile and un-trustworthy, could best be dealt with as other human beings, despite thedread o being killed, dismembered, and potentially consumed. Tey wereattempting to interpret a radically different culture, which in the heat o

conict they only imperectly understood. One wonders how they mighthave represented this culture in ethnographies, museums, and historicalsocieties o their own.

Notes

Abbreviations used in the endnotes are as ollows: Arquivo Histórico do Exército,

Rio de Janeiro (AHEx); Biblioteca Nacional, Rio de Janeiro (bnrj); Seção de Man-

uscritos (sm); Documentos Biográcos (db); Library o Congress, Washington dc (lc); Geography and Map Division (gmd); Revista do Arquivo Público Mineiro


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38

(rapm). I wish to thank Susan Sleeper-Smith or the opportunity to participate in

the Newberry Library Symposium, at which this chapter was rst presented.

1. Hal Langur, Te Forbidden Lands: Colonial Identity, Frontier Violence, and the Per-

sistence o Brazil’s Eastern Indians, – (Stanord ca: Stanord University

Press, 2006), esp. chap. 1. Other recent contributions to the history o Brazil’s east-ern Indians during this period include B. J. Barickman, “‘ame Indians,’ ‘Wild

Heathens,’ and Settlers in Southern Bahia in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nine-teenth Centuries,” Americas 51, no. 3 (1995): 326–27; Judy Bieber, “Te Aldeia Sys-

tem Reborn: Botocudo Communities on the Espírito Santo–Minas Gerais Fron-

tier, 1808–1845” (paper presented at the Latin American Studies AssociationConerence, Chicago il, September 24–26, 1998); Judy Bieber, “Shifing Frontiers:

Te Role o Subsistence, Disease, and Environment in Shaping Indigenous De-nitions o Frontiers in Minas Gerais, 1808–1850,” (paper presented at the Ameri-

can Historical Association Conerence, San Francisco ca, January 2002); MariaHilda Baquiero Paraíso, “O empo da dor e do rabalho: A Conquista dos er-

ritórios Indígenas nos Sertões do Leste,” (PhD diss., Universidade de São Paulo,

1998); and Maria Leônia Chaves de Resende, “Gentios brasílicos: Índios coloniais

em Minas Gerais setecentista,” (PhD diss., Universidade de Campinas, 2003).

2. Te extent to which cannibalism in Brazil, the early modern Americas, and the

non-Western world in general constituted a reality or a myth that was propagatedto justiy conquest and enslavement continues to divide anthropologists. Notable

contributions to this debate include W. Arens, Te Man-Eating Myth: Anthropol-ogy and Anthropophagy (New York: Oxord University Press, 1979); Frank Les-

tringant, Cannibals: Te Discovery and Representation o the Cannibal rom Colum-

bus to Jules Verne, trans. Rosemary Morris (Berkeley: University o Caliornia

Press, 1997); Francis Barker, Peter Hulme, and Margaret Iversen, eds., Cannibal-

ism and the Colonial World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Lau-

rence R. Goldman, ed., Te Anthropology o Cannibalism (Westport ct: Bergin

and Garvey, 1999). See also Beth A. Conklin, Consuming Grie: Compassionate

Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society (Austin: University o exas Press, 2001);

Barbara Ganson, Te Guaraní under Spanish Rule in the Río de la Plata (Stanordca: Stanord University Press, 2003), 22–23; Alida C. Metcal, Go-Betweens and

the Colonization o Brazil, – (Austin: University o exas Press, 2005);

Neil L. Whitehead, Dark Shamans: Kanaimà and the Poetics o Violent Death

(Durham nc: Duke University Press, 2002), 191–95, 236–43; H. E. Martel, “Hans

Staden’s Captive Soul: Identity, Imperialism, and Rumors o Cannibalism in Six-teenth-Century Brazil,” Journal o World History 17, no. 1 (2006): 61–69.

3. Except where otherwise indicated, the ollowing account is recorded in José

Pereira Freire de Moura, “Notícia e Observaçoens Sobre os Índios Botocudos que

Frequentão as Margens do Rio Jequitinhonha, e se Chamao Ambarés, ou Ay-morés,” ocoiós, December 1809, and is reprinted in rapm 2, no. 1 (1897): 28–31.


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4. Raimundo José da Cunha Matos, Corograa Histórica da Província de Minas

Gerais () (São Paulo: Editóra Itatiaia, 1981), 1:194, 2:168; Auguste de Saint-

Hilaire, Viagem pelas Províncias do Rio de Janeiro e Minas Gerais, trans. Vivaldi

Moreira (Belo Horizonte, Brasil: Editóra Itatiaia, 1975), 284n428.

5. José Pereira Freire de Moura identies this corporal by name, Moura to the WarMinister, ocoiós, January 5, 1810, reprinted in rapm 2, no. 1 (1897): 32.

6. Moura to War Minister, rapm: 31–34; José de Sousa Caldas, “Copia do Roteiro

para se Procurar a Lagoa Dourada,” n.d., reprinted in rapm 2, no. 1 (1897): 34.

Te Lagoa Dourada described in these sources should not to be conused with

the municipal district bearing the same name in southern Minas Gerais, near the

city o São João del-Rei.

7. Moura to War Minister, rapm: 31–34. Moura identied the reugee groups in theorests as the “Camanachos, Capoches, Pantimes, e Maquary.” I suspect he meant

the Kumanaxó, Kopoxó, Panhame, and possibly the Makoni. See Langur, Forbid-den Lands, 24.

8. Moura to War Minister, rapm: 31–34.

9. Moura to War Minister, rapm: 31–34.

10. José Pereira Freire de Moura, “Lista dos Homens q. Pedi de Auxilio ao Com.te do

Districto de S. Domingos,” reprinted in rapm 2, no. 1 (1897): 35–36; José Pereira

Freire de Moura, “Instruçoens q. se Darão ao Chee da Bandeira q. or Procurar

a Lagôa-Dourada,” reprinted in rapm 2, no. 1 (1897): 35–36.

11. Diogo Pereira Ribeiro de Vasconcelos, Breve Descrição Geográca, Física e Política

da Capitania de Minas Gerais (1807; repr., Belo Horizonte, Brasil: Fundação JoãoPinheiro, 1994), 144–50, 156–57.

12. Vasconcelos, Breve Descrição Geográca, 144–50, 156–57.



15. Langur, Forbidden Lands, chap. 1.

16. “Carta Régia [royal edict] ao Governador e Capitão General da Capitania de

Minas Gerais Sobre a Guerra aos Indios Botecudos,” May 13, 1808, in Legislação

Indigenista no Século XIX: Uma Compilação (–), ed. Manuela Carneiroda Cunha (São Paulo: Universidade de São Paulo, 1992), 57–60.

17. “Carta Régia,” in Cunha, Legislação Indigenista, 57–60.

18. Maximilian, Prinz von Wied, Viagem ao Brasil , trans. Edgar Süssekind de Men-

donça and Flávio Poppe de Figueiredo (Belo Horizonte: Editóra Itatiaia, 1989),

153; Wilhelm Ludwig von Eschwege, “Copia de Huma Carta Feita pelo Sargento

Mor Eschwege (Acerca dos Botocudos e das Divisões da Conquista) com Notas

pelo Deputado da Junta Militar, Matheus Herculano Monteiro,” n.p., 1811, Docu-ment 66, codex 8, 1, 8, sm, bnrj. On the largest expedition, see X. Chabert, An

Historical Account o the Manners and Customs o the Savage Inhabitants o Brazil;ogether with a Sketch o the Lie o the Botocudo Chiefain and Family (Exeter,


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40

UK: R. Cullum, 1823). On the war more generally, see John Hemming, Amazon

Frontier: Te Deeat o the Brazilian Indians (Cambridge ma: Harvard UniversityPress, 1987), 92–3, 99–100; Maria Hilda Baquiero Paraíso, “Os Botocudos e sua

rajetória Histórica,” in História dos índios no Brasil , ed. Manuela Carneiro da

Cunha (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1992), 417–23; Barickman, “‘ame In-dians,’ ” 359–65.

19. War Minister to the Governor, Rio de Janeiro, August 4, 1808, codex I-1, 1, 34, ol.

23v, Livros da Capitania, Minas Gerais, 1808–1811, AHEx.

20. See Langur, Forbidden Lands, chap. 8; Beatriz Perrone-Moisés, “Índios Livres e

Índios Escravos: Os Princípios da Legislação Indigenista do Período Colonial

(Séculos XVI a XVIII),” in Carneiro da Cunha, História dos índios no Brasil , 115–32; Jill Lepore, Te Name o War: King Philip’s War and the Origins o American

Identity (New York: Knop, 1998), 106–13.

21. Eschwege, “Copia de Huma Carta Feita pelo Sargento Mor Eschwege”; José Bon-iácio de Andrada e Silva, “Apontamentos para a Civilização dos Índios Bravos

do Ímpério do Brasil,” in O Pensamento Vivo de José Boniácio (1823: repr., São

Paulo: Livraria Martins, 1961), 78–107. See also Manuela Carneiro da Cunha, “Pen-

sar os Índios: Apontamentos Sobre José Boniácio,” in Antropologia do Brasil:

Mito, História, Etnicidade (São Paulo: Brasiliense / edusp, 1986), 165–73; Cunha,prologue to Legislação Indigenista, 1–34; and David reece, Exiles, Allies, Rebels:

Brazil’s Indianist Movement, Indigenist Politics, and the Imperial Nation-State

(Westport ct: Greenwood Press, 2000), 81–82.

22. Te most relevant published discussions by Eschwege o Brazil’s eastern Indi-

ans appear in Wilhelm Ludwig von Eschwege, Brasil, Novo Mundo, trans. Domí-cio de Figueiredo Murta, Coleção Mineiriana, Série Clássicos (Belo Horizonte,

Brasil: Fundação João Pinheiro, 1996); Wilhelm Ludwig von Eschwege, Pluto

Brasiliensis, trans. Domício de Figueiredo Murta, 2 vols. (Belo Horizonte, Bra-

sil: Editóra Itatiaia, 1979); Wilhelm Ludwig von Eschwege, Jornal do Brasil, –

, ou Relatos Diversos do Brasil, Coletados Durante Expedições Cientícas

(Belo Horizonte, Brasil:

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