Indian and Nation. The ‚indio‘ in Nineteenth-Century Brazilian Historiography
Paper prepared for delivery at the 2003 meeting of the Latin American Studies Association
Dallas, Texas, USA, March 27-29, 2003
HIS 020: State and Society in Nineteenth-Century Brazil
Saturday, 29 March 2003
Christian Haußer
University of Hamburg
Kastanienallee 25
20359 Hamburg
Germany
Tel.: +49 (0)40 316351 or +49 0175 3481522 (mobile)
E-Mail: [email protected]
1
I. Introduction
One of the most constant topics in Latin American History is the debate on the
‚indio‘. Since the occupation of America by Europeans, the ‚indio‘ – that’s the term as he
soon became usual by the European colonizers as a collective concept for all native peoples
– had been established as a subject of intense discussions. Whereas in the early phase of
colonization the American natives have been the subject of scrupulous attempts of EarlyModern thinkers to fit America and his inhabitants in the traditional European conception
of the world and the man in order to legitimize conquest, perspective changed in course of
time with the consolidation of the Portuguese and Spanish dominion.1
With the advancing formation of a self-conscience in Spanish America different to
that of the colonial power, the reference to the past of the subjugated territories and their
societies also changed and contributed to the political mark-off from the European
metropolis. A central role played historical works which included in their projects of a
national history the precolombian cultures as a part of their own past.2 Such an insertion
didn’t occur as a memory of Indian culture serving as a foundation for national identity
based on ethnical or cultural traditions as it was the case of Twentieth-Century‘s
‚indigenismo‘ in some countries. By recalling and idealizing Aztecs, Maya and Inca, it was
made an analogy to Europe‘s classical antiquity in order to demonstrate the failure and
thereby the illegality of Spanish rule in America. It was in this way that the ‚indio‘ was
mobilized against Spanish dominion and in favour of the cause of the Creole elite by
1
There is a lot of literature about America and his natives in the Early Modern Age. To mention some important works:
Lewis Hanke, The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the Conquest of America, Philadelphia 1949; idem., Aristotle and the
American Indians. A Study in Race Prejudice in the Modern World, London 1959; Urs Bitterli, Die 'Wilden' und die
'Zivilisierten'. Grundzüge einer Geistes- und Kulturgeschichte der europäisch-überseeischen Begegnung, Munich 1976;
Hans-Joachim König, Verständnislosigkeit und Verstehen, Sicherheit und Zweifel: Das Indiobild spanischer Chronisten
im 16. Jahrhundert, in: Urs Bitterli, Eberhard Schmitt (eds.), Die Kenntnis beider ‚Indien im frühneuzeitlichen Europa,
Munich 1991, pp. 37-62; Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man. The American Indian and the Origins of
Comparative Ethnology, Cambridge 1982; La Imagen del Indio en la Europa Moderna. Consejo Superior de
Investigaciopnes Científicas, Fundación Europea de la Ciencia, Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos, Sevilla 1990;
Anthony Pagden, Spanish Imperialism and the Political Imagination. Studies in European and Spanish American Social
and Political Theory 1513-1830, New Haven, London 1990, ch. 1 and 2; idem, European Encounters with the New World:
from Renaissance to Romanticism, New Haven, London 1993; Patricia Seed, Commentary. ‚Are These Not Also Men?‘:
The Indians‘ Humanity and Capacity for Spanish Civilisation, in: Journal of Latin American Studies 25 (1993), pp. 629652; Alain Milhou, Die Neue Welt als geistiges und moralisches Problem (1492-1609), in: Horst Pietschmann (ed.),
Mittel-, Südamerika und die Karibik bis 1760 (=Handbuch der Geschichte Lateinamerikas, vol. 1), Stuttgart 1994, pp.
274-296.
2
Latin American Historiography is a rather neglected field of research. A survey on Latin American historiography gives
Michael Riekenberg, Große Transformationen des Geschichtsdenkens in Lateinamerika seit 1500, in: Jörn Rüsen, Michael
Gottlob, Achim Mittag (eds.), Die Vielfalt der Kulturen (=Erinnerung, Geschichte, Identität, vol. 4), Frankfurt/Main 1998,
pp. 247-268; for historical culture and memory see François-Xavier Guerra (ed.), Mémoires en devenir. Amérique Latine
XVI e - XXe siècle. Colloque international de Paris, 1er - 3 décembre 1992 (=Collection de la Maison des Pays Ibériques,
vol. 62), Paris 1993; for historiography in the nineteenth century see E. Bradford Burns, Ideology in Nineteenth-Century
Latin American Historiography, in: Hispanic American Historical Review 58/3 (1978), pp. 409-431; Germán Colmenares,
Las convenciones contra la cultura, Bogotá 1987; a broad point of departure for research offers Jochen Meißner,
Motivations, Ideas, Functions, Methodology and Styles of Nineteenth-Century Spanish American Historiography
(=Working Paper No. 00-26, prepared for the ‚International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World, 1500-1800,
Harvard University, Cambridge, Ma. 2000). A very good case study on the significance of history in the nineteenth
century is Allen Woll, A functional past: the uses of history in Nineteenth-Century Chile, Baton Rouge, London 1982.
2
historiography. Whereas the ‚indio‘ since European colonization had been a parable for the
inferiority of the newly discovered continent, during the independence of Spanish America
his meaning shifted and he gradually became in historiography a symbol for national
sovereignity.3
The case of Brazil was different. There, historiography explicitly turned against
indianist tendencies and their idealization of the ‚indio‘. Nineteenth-Century historians
denied the ‚indio‘ to become a national symbol.4 This is particularly true for Francisco
Adolfo Varnhagen and his ‚História Geral do Brasil‘, the most influential historiographical
work of the country in the nineteenth century.5 This work was rightly seen by scholarship
mainly in the political context of conservative ‚regresso‘ and post-‚regresso‘ efforts to
consolidate the monarchial and centralized state.6 This, however, directed the attention
away from Varnhagen’s interest in Brazilian society and her formation evident in his work
too. Only rarely this point called readers‘ attention and then it was especially his treatment
of the Indians which was rejected. His anti-indianist position and, connected with this, the
lacking of national pride were the reproaches made time and again since the first edition of
his work was published in 1854 – 1857.7 More recent works have continued in confirming
this anti-indianist and pro-lusitanian attitude in Varnhagen.8 Such categorical judgements
3
Hans-Joachim König, Auf dem Wege zur Nation. Nationalismus im Prozeß der Staats- und Nationbildung Neu-Granadas
1750 bis 1856 (=Beiträge zur Kolonial- und Überseegeschichte, Bd. 37), Stuttgart 1988; Pagden, Imperialism, ch. 4 and 5;
Hans-Joachim König, Die Mythisierung der ‚Conquista‘ und des ‚Indio‘ zu Beginn der Saats- und Nationabildung in
Hispanoamerika, in: Karl Kohut (ed.), Der eroberte Kontinent: Historische Realität, Rechtfertigung und literarische
Darstellung der Kolonisation. Akten des Symposiums ‚Eroberung und Inbesitznahme Amerikas im 16. Jahrhundert‘ vom
23. - 26. November 1987 (=Americana Eystettensia, Ser. A, Kongressakten, Bd. 7), Frankfurt / Main 1991, pp. 361-375;
David A. Brading, The First America. The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots, and the Liberal State, 1492-1867,
Cambridge 1993, Part 3; Hans-Joachim König, ¿Bárbaro o símbolo de la libertad? ¿Menor de edad o ciudadano? Imagen
del indio y política indigenista en Hispanoamérica, in: idem (ed.), El indio como sujeto y objeto de la historia
latinoamericana: pasado y presente. Akten der ADLAF-Tagung vom 25. bis 28. Oktober 1995 in Eichstätt (=Americana
Eystettensia, Ser. A, Actas, Bd. 18), Frankfurt / Main, Madrid 1998, pp. 13-31.
4
A survey on historiography in Brazil offer José Honório Rodrigues, História e Historiadores do Brasil, São Paulo 1965;
idem, Teoria da História do Brasil, São Paulo 19693; Pedro Moacyr Campos, Emília Viotti da Costa, Esboço da
historiografia brasileira nos séculos XIX e XX, in: Jean Glénisson, Iniciação aos Estudos Históricos, Rio de Janeiro, São
Paulo 1977, pp. 250-293; Francisco Iglésias, Historiadores do Brasil: capítulos de historiografia brasileira, Rio de Janeiro,
Belo Horizonte 2000.
5
John M. Monteiro, The Heathen Castes of Sixteenth-Century Portuguese America: Unity, Diversity, and the Invention of
the Brazilian Indians, in: Hispanic American Historical Review 80/4 (2000), pp. 697-719, remarks that in Brazil, the noble
‚indio‘ played the key role in a „national mythography“ too, but excepts Varnhagen (pp. 710-717). Monteiro‘s article on
Varnhagen’s image of the Indian relies not, with one exception, on the insertion of the Indian in the historical context as
presented in the ‚História Geral do Brasil‘, but on Varnhagen’s notes on the ‚Tratado descritivo‘. Citations in the
following refer to Francisco Adolfo Varnhagen, História Geral do Brasil: antes de sua separação e independência de
Portugal, 5 vols., São Paulo, Cayeiras, Rio de Janeiro 19273, cited as Varnhagen, História (1927) and Francisco Adolfo
Varnhagen, História Geral do Brasil: antes de sua separação e independência de Portugal, 5 vols., Belo Hoizonte, São
Paulo 198110, cited as Varnhagen, História (1981).
6
Américo Jacobina Lacombe, As idéias políticas de Varnhagen, in: Revista do Instituto Historico e Geografico Brasileiro
265 (1967), pp. 135-154. José Honório Rodrigues, História da história do Brasil. A historiografia conservadora (=História
da história do Brasil, vol. 2, pt.1), São Paulo 1978.
7
For the reception of Varnhagen’s main work since its first publication see Arno Wehling, Estado, história e memória:
Varnhagen e a construção da identidade nacional, Rio de Janeiro 1999, pp. 195-210.
8
Besides the works of Iglésias, Monteiro, Lacombe and Wehling see José Honório Rodrigues, Varnhagen: mestre da
história geral do Brasil, in: Revista do Instituto Historico e Geografico Brasileiro 265 (1967), pp. 170-196; Nilo Odália,
Varnhagen, São Paulo 1979; José Honório Rodrigues, Varnhagen: primeiro mestre da históriografia brasileira, in: Revista
do Instituto Historico e Geografico Brasileiro 328 (1980), pp. 135-160; Nilo Odália, As formas do mesmo: ensaios sobre
o pensamento historiográfico de Varnhagen e Oliveira Vianna, São Paulo 1997, pp. 11-112.
3
and reproaches ignore, however, not only the fact, that the American natives, whose
language he suggested to learn and even to teach, were an important theme in his work
during al his life.9 Beyond that, they still prevent a thorough discussion of the image of the
Indian in Nineteenth-Century Historiography and make forget that it was precisely the
search for a national project which made it impossible for the ‚indio‘ to become a symbol
for independent Brazil.
II. The historical role of the Brazilian ‚indio‘
Varnhagen himself did not ignore at all the voices raised up against him. He took
them up and he answered with the real Indian. In the prologue to the second edition of the
‚História Geral do Brasil’ he expressed his views about the reproach of his supposed
negligence of the Indians in Brazilian history referring to his productive studies on them.10
The preface of the first edition emphasizes his interest for the Indians and holds against the
symbolic idealization of the native, which he calls disapprovingly „brasileirismo“ the real
‚indio‘ which is the subject of the scholar. To the glorified image of the Indian, the
historian opposes his knowledge which alone allows to assign to the ‚indio‘ his adequate
place in Brazilian history. There is little known about this real ‚indio‘ but he certainly has
nothing to do with the image created by those eager to see in him a national emblem.
Varnhagen is even unable to see where should be the advantage of such a mystifcation and
so he remarks self-confidently in the preface of the first edition:
respectivamente aos índios, filosófica e profundamente pouco estudados, e que não
falta quem seja devoto que se devem de todo reabilitar, por motivos cujas vantagens de
moralidade, de justiça ou de conveniência social desconhecemos – nós que como
historiador sacrificamos tudo às convic ções da consciência, e estamos persuadidos de
que, se, por figurada idéia de brasileirismo, os quisséssemos indevidamente exalçar,
concluiríamos por ser injustos com eles [...] e portanto com toda a nação atual
brasileira, a que nos gloriamos de pertencer.11
In the dispute between the search for a national symbol und historical knowledge, the last
takes the decision. But which are these „convicções da consciência“ to which the historian
appeals and which constitute the foundation of his image of the Indian?
9
Francisco Adolfo Varnhagen, L’origine touranienne des Américains Tupi-Caribes et des anciens Égyptiens, montrée
principalment par la philologie comparée; et notice d’une émigration en Amérique effectuée à travers l’Atlantique siècles
avant notre ère, Vienne 1876; idem, Línguas, Emigrações e Arqueologia. Padrões de mármore dos primeiros
descobridores, in: Revista do Instituto Historico e Geografico Brasileiro 12 (1849), pp. 366-376 and 21 (1858), pp. 431441; Memória sobre a necessidade do estudo e do ensino das línguas indígenas do Brasil, in: Revista do Instituto Historico
e Geografico Brasileiro 3 (1841), pp. 53-63.
10
Francisco Adolfo Varnhagen, Prologo da 2.a edição, in: idem, História (1927), vol. 1, p. XIV.
11
Francisco Adolfo Varnhagen, Prefácio da 1.a edição, in: idem, História (1927), vol. 1, p. XXI.
4
Once, the attention goes to the quest for the origin of the Brazilian population. Soon
after its foundation in 1838, the ‚Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro‘ has entrusted a
commission to examine an inscription discovered on the Gávea Hill south of Rio de
Janeiro. The background was the question if Brazil had been colonized by another, more
developed culture even before the population who the Portuguese met on their arrival. The
report of this comission concluded that a decision if it were human inscriptions, maybe of
the Phenicians, or natural furrows in the relatively soft stone was not possible.12 A similar
attention called an account from 1753 about a hidden town in the Bahian interior which was
found in Rio’s ‚Biblioteca Publica‘, also published by the ‚Revista do Instituto Histórico e
Geográfico Brasileiro‘ in 1839, together with a table with the inscriptions found in this
town.13 Foreign institutions as the Danish ‚Société Royale des Antiquaires du Nord‘ also
contributed to the concern with the possible existence of higher civilizations in the preportuguese era.14 The founder and driving force of this institution, Carl Christian Rafn,
considered being his task to study Northern European prehistory and to show that not only
the North but also the South of the American continent was discovered and settled first by
Vikings. The close contact, also on a personal level, between the ‚Instituto Histórico e
Geográfico Brasileiro‘ and the ‚Société Royale des Antiquaires du Nord‘ made it possible
for Rafn to promote his thesis about the colonization of Brazil by Vikings in the tenth
century.15 The German natural scientist Karl Friedrich Philipp von Martius tended in the
same direction. In his essay ‚Como se deve escrever a história do Brasil‘, the foundational
manifesto of Brazilian historiography winning the price of the ‚Instituto‘ in 1844, he
discussed the Indians and their role in the country’s history. Martius was reserved what
about the presence of other people coming from overseas but assumed that there must have
existed in earlier times a primitive people in America which lived in a state of flourishing
culture and of who the people living actually in Brazil represent no more than a decadent
form.16
12
Manoel de Araújo Porto Alegre, Januário da Cunha Barbosa, Relatório sobre a inscripção da Gávia. Mandada examinar
pelo Instituto Historico e Geographico Brazileiro, in: Revista do Instituto Historico e Geografico Brasileiro 1/2 (1839),
19083, pp. 77-81.
13
Relacão Historica de uma occulta e grande povoação antiquissima, sem moradores, que se descobriu no anno de 1753,
nos sertões do Brazil; copiada de um manuscrito da Biblioteca Publica do Rio de Janeiro, in: Revista do Instituto Historico
e Geografico Brasileiro 1/3 (1839), 19083, pp. 150-155.
14
For the ‚Société Royale des Antiquaires du Nord‘ and her connections to the ‚Instituto Histórico e Geográfico
Brasileiro‘ see Lúcia Maria Paschoal Guimarães, Uma parceria inesperada: Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro e
Sociedade Real dos Antiquários do Norte, in: Revista do Instituto Historico e Geografico Brasileiro 155/384 (1994), pp.
499-511; idem, Brigitte Holten, O Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro, a Sociedade Real dos Antiquários do Norte
e o Dr. Peter Wilhem Lund: a suposta presença escandinava na Terra de Santa Cruz e a ciência, Texto preparado para
entrega no Encontro de 1997 da Latin American Studies Association, Continental Plaza Hotel, Guadalajara, México, 1719 de abril de 1997; Manoel Luiz Salgado Guimarães, Para reescrever o passado como história: O IHGB e a Sociedade [!]
dos Antiquários do Norte, in: Alda Heizer, Antonio Augusto Passos Vieira (eds.), Ciência, Civilização e Império nos
Trópicos, Rio de Janeiro 2001, pp. 1-28.
15
Carl Christian Rafn, Memoria sobre o descobrimento da America no seculo decimo, in: Revista do Instituto Historico e
Geografico Brasileiro 2/2 (1840), 19083, pp. 214-241.
16
Karl Friedrich Philipp von Martius, Como se deve escrever a História do Brasil, in: Revista do Instituto Historico e
Geografico Brasileiro 219/2 (1953), pp. 187-205. He already had advocated this tesis in an early essay, see Karl Friedrich
Philipp von Martius, Die Physiognomie des Pflanzenreiches in Brasilien, eine Rede gelesen in der zur Feier der
5
Neither Varnhagen nor other historians were able to share the enthusiasm of their
colleagues in their search for cultures older and more developed than that of the current
‚indios‘.17 The inscriptions founded on rocks should be examined more thoroughly. They,
however, did not indicate to antique high civilizations but rather to migrations which had
started since early times from East Asia to America when Asia and America not have been
two separated continents yet or when they were connected by a frozen and thereby
traversable Bering Street.18 Such an antecipation of a thesis which only in the twentieth
century should gain general recognition was, however, not of importance. More important
was the statement that, if there should have been earlier higher developed civilizations, they
left no vestiges.19 The many Indian peoples who the Portuguese met landing on the
Brazilian shores were not all the descendants of these cultures.20 Where, then, did the
Indians came from?
Historian Mello Moraes answering this question, relies on Indian myths, but above
all on classical authorities and the bible. Varnhagen refers to travel accounts and
descriptions of the country, particularly on the descriptions given by Gabriel Soares de
Sousa in the late sixteenth century, which Varnhagen himself edited under the title ‚Tratado
descritivo do Brasil em 1587‘.21 More important are his studies on language „única fonte
pura“22 which rely in turn on older dictionnaries written by Jesuits. Both, Mello Moraes and
Varnhagen, come to the same conclusion, however, that the origin of the ‚indios‘ lays in
Asia. Mello Moraes considers the „tribus selvagens dos Tataros“23 as the Indian‘s
predecessors. Varnhagen identifies their origin in Caria, a coastal region in the
southwestern part of antique Minor Asia. Its inhabitants, the Carians, are, in turn,
themselves probably descendants of the Scyths and also related to the Egyptians. It was
maybe after their defeat in the Trojan War when they seeked, frightened by the victorious
Greeks, to escape over the Mediterranean in the Atlantic Ocean. 24 A comparison with the
Guanches, the native people of the Canary Islands, proves that the Carians stem from the
Mediterranean. There had existed between both people historical connections and both
show many similarities in their culture. On their flight, the Carians passed by the Canaries
by mistake or they seeked the open Ocean on purpose. Anyway, a part of them landed in
Mexiko, Central America, on the Antilles and in Brazil, naming themselves there
fünfundzwanzigjährigen glorreichen Regierung Seiner Majestät des Königs am 14. Februar 1824 gehaltenen
außerordentlichen festlichen Sitzung der königl. baierischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, München 1824. For Martius
and his interest in the natural sciences and in anthropology during his sojourn in Brazil see Karen Macknow Lisboa, A
nova Atlântida de Spix e Martius: natureza e civilização na ‚Viagem pelo Brasil‘ (1817-1820), São Paulo 1997.
17
For example Alexandre José de Mello Moraes, Corografia historica, chronographica, genealogica, nobiliaria e politica
do Imperio do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro 1858-1863, pp. 219-231 and pp. 272-276.
18
Varnhagen, História (1981), vol. 1, p. 53/54.
19
José Ignacio de Abreu e Lima, Synopsis ou Deducção Chronologica dos factos mais notaveis da Historia do Brasil,
Pernambuco 1845, pp. 1-9.
20
About the common origin of all Indian peoples in Brazil see Varnhagen, História (1981), vol. 1, pp. 24-29.
21
See Monteiro, Heathen Castes, pp. 709-717.
22
Varnhagen, História (1981), Bd. 1, S. 26.
23
Mello Moraes, Corografia, p. 276.
6
‚Tupinambá‘. Starting from the River Amazon, they travelled up and down the river to
continue along the Brazilian coast reaching far to the south, conquering the country
gradually by the seaside and becoming this way the aboriginal people of all Brazilian
Indians.25
That these are more than sophistries outdated by modern scholarship becomes soon
clear, if one considers the conclusions to which Varnhagen comes. Since the Indians are not
the country’s natives, they cannot claim title on it. For the same reason, as it is wrong to
designate the inhabitants as ‚indios‘ since they are not the inhabitants of India, it is wrong
to call them ‚indígenas‘, because they are not the first inhabitants of the country.26 The
people calling themselves ‚Tupinambá‘ are rather themselves invadors, whose superior
civilization made possible the cruel submission of the real aborigines. This submission was
such a crime that the European landfall gains even a religious significance in a double
sense, as a motif of expiation for the suffered harm and as a concrete hope for redemption
by the Christian faith.
Em todo caso, para nós, não cabe a mínima dúvida que os Caribs ou Tupis haviam,
com inauditas crueldades, invadido uma grande parte do lado oriental deste continente,
cujos anteriores habitantes, bem que em maior atraso, eram, em geral, mansos e
timoratos. A seu turno devia chegar-lhes o dia da expia ção. Veio a trazê-lo o
descobrimento e colonização, efetuados pela Europa christã.27
But the definition of the origin of the ‚Tupinambá‘ is also important in another
aspect. By refering to their Asian roots somewhere between the Black Sea and Minor Asia
– Varnhagen‘s statements remain unclear in this aspect – the Indians continue being bind
up in a conception of the world and the man which reaches back to European antiquity. In
Aristotle, the Scyths were already the symbol of barbarity to which was opposed
‚civilization‘ as it could be found in the Greeks.28 In the sixteenth century, the Spanish
Jesuit José de Acosta draw a parallel between the Barbarians of the antiquity and the
American ‚indios‘ by affirming the ‚indios‘‘ Asian provenance and by this way their low
civilizational level, comparable to that of the European Barbarians of antiquity.29
Varnhagen, too, defends the thesis of the Asian provenance and he is able by doing so to
develop analogies between the Brazilian ‚indios‘ and the less developed cultures of the
European prehistory and antiquity. The ‚indios‘ are a less developed degree in human
24
For kinship of the Carians with the Scyths see Varnhagen, História (1981), vol. 1, p. 43.
Ibidem, pp. 53-56.
26
Ibidem, p. 89.
27
Ibidem, p. 56.
28
Pagden, Fall, pp. 15-26 and pp. 193-195.
29
Hanke, Aristotle, Wilfried Nippel, Griechen, Barbaren und 'Wilde'. Alte Geschichte und Sozialanthropologie,
Frankfurt/Main 1980; Pagden, Fall.
25
7
evolution, that is they are ‚Barbarians‘ or ‚Savages‘, Varnhagen uses both concepts.30 At
the same time, they continue to be part of humanity. Contrary to the so-called ‚Polygenists‘
who assumed the existence of another kind of man before Adam, the so-called preadamites,
Varnhagen maintains the unity of mankind.31 The Indians‘ Asian origin makes it possible at
all to draw on experiences already known and to cite historical comparisons to define the
Indians‘ level of culture.32 Along with that, their provenance guarantees that they are,
without any doubt, men whose abilities aren’t totally developed. As ‚Barbarians‘, they
need, in order to become fully human, ‚civilization‘. Although Mello Moraes, for instance,
contrary to Varnhagen, distinguishes between „Indios mansos, e Indios bravos“33 , Indians
easily and hardly educable, it is true for both types that they are underdeveloped and this
inferiority makes it necessary to civilize them. Being humans, on the other side, they are
able to adquire ‚civilization‘. This ‚civilization‘, which is the moving principle of history,
passed over to Brazil with the Portuguese. Similarly to the Phenicians, Greeks and Romans
who imposed their culture on the primitive people in the European antiquity, it were the
Portuguese, standing on a much higher level of ‚civilization‘, who had assumed with their
landing in America the historical task to bring progress to the underdeveloped Indians and
to open up Brazil for ‚civilization‘.34 Before the arrival of the Portuguese, the Brazilian
Indians had been underdeveloped, untouched by ‚civilization‘ and thereby unable to be part
of history. The sources of history of ‚civilization‘ lay rather in Europe. Indians were, as
they were in Hegel as well, excluded from the proper process of history. 35 Their culture
before the arrival of the Portuguese Varnhagen resumes as a an „estado, não podemos dizer
de civilização, mas de barbárie e de atraso. De tais povos na infância não há história: há só
etnografia.”36 ‘Civilization’ means history and this history begins in Brazil with the
Portuguese.
Besides this, objections to religion played a role for the rejection of the ‚indio‘ as a
national emblem. Varnhagen could identifiy in the Indians vestiges of religion. Funeral
ceremonies, fear of thunderstorms as manifestations of higher powers, the existence of
seers, the belief in signs and the fear of goblins testify at least superstition. And even
cannibalism indicates to abstract thinking, since the ‚indios‘ eat the enemies in fear of
vengeance of those they killed. The possibility to take revenge continues, they believe,
beyond death. Only by incorparating the dead’s body in one’s own, this danger can be
30
In the preface to the first edition Varnhagen had still distinguished between „barbaros Africanos“ and the „selvagens
Indios“, see Varnhagen, História (1927), vol. 1, p. XXI. For the difference between the ‚Savages‘ and ‚Barbarians‘ see
Bitterli, ‚Wilden‘, pp. 367-376.
31
For the dispute between the so-called ‚monogenists‘ and ‚polygenists‘ about the turn of the century see Bitterli,
‚Wilden‘, p. 327-331.
32
For instance Varnhagen, História (1981), vol. 1, pp. 34, 44, 46 and 48.
33
Ibidem, p. 30; Mello Moraes, Corografia, p. 232.
34
Varnhagen, História (1981), vol. 1, p. 53.
35
On the exclusion of the Indians from History since Hegel see Antonello Gerbi, The Dispute of the New World. The
History of a Polemic, 1750-1900, Pittsburgh 1973, pp. 417-441.
36
Varnhagen, História (1981), vol. 1, p. 30.
8
eliminated. Indians are permanently worried about taking revenge and saving themselves
from vengeance, this dominates all their lifes and is so the only real faith they have.
Cannibalism becomes so a rudimentary form of metaphysics, left behind to them by their
ancestors; „estes povos, ou antes, seus antepassados, tinham idéias superiores às do instinto
brutal.“37 They also had lacked, however, any real notion of God or Eternity, „nem
concebiam a idéia de um ente superior, imaterial e infinito a reger este infinito Orbe“.38
A more impotant argument in the discussion with the advocates of Indianism was,
however, the Indians‘ social and political constitution. Their family life is barely
developed. Most of the work do women and their position is so inferior to that of man that
Varnhagen calls them slaves who even do not hesitate to suffocate their babies of female
sex to prevent them from a similar fate.39 Children don’t respect their mothers, and these
get so drunken on celebrations that they neglect their infants until they die.40 These
examples shall illustrate how weak were ties in the family, the most elementary form of
social life, which since Aristotle was considered the foundation of society and which also
was for Varnhagen the „primeiro elemento de nossa organização social“.41
Also the tribes and their relationship to each other are caracterized by confusion and
decadence. Varnhagen starts his presentation of the Brazilian Indian first by stating that
they are not sedentary, but nomades. Since only a stationary settlement warrants the
development of those living in it, there have been before 1500 in Brazil, only little
inhabitants, concentrated in the coastal region.42 Besides their nomadic life-style, sodomy is
as usual as the custom to poisson themselves by eating soil and clay.43 All that had led to a
constant decrease of the population so that the Portuguese found vast tracts of land without
any human being in the beginning of their colonization. The different tribes do not cultivate
any relationship among them but only hostilities. Their vengefulness causes permanent
wars of extermination which not only contribute to the decrease of population but also to a
lack of any sentiment of union with any other group who is not the own. The horizon of
sociability ends with the own tribe and, contrary to, for instance, Peru where the population
lived under a common chief and exposed to the civilizing influence of an aristocracy, the
Brazilian peoples have splitted and created hostility among them albeit their common
origin.44 All this, a weak social structure which allows a certain feeling of solidarity only
within the own tribe, cannibalism and a real Hobbesian condition of the ‚homo homini
lupus‘ among the various tribes togehter with innate negative caracteristics as falsehood,
infidelity, inconstancy, ingratitude, mistrust, the unability to feel compassion and a dull
37
Ibidem, p. 4.
Ibidem, pp. 43-45..
39
Ibidem, p. 41.
40
Ibidem, p. 46.
41
Ibidem, p. 48.
42
Ibidem, p. 24.
43
Ibidem, p.29.
44
Ibidem, pp. 23-24 and p. 29; Mello Moraes, Corografia, p. 269.
38
9
brutality in general45 results in an image which contravenes radically the traditional
European conception of man since antiquity to which also Varnhagen is indebted.
It was also Aristotle who defined man as a social being. As such a ‚zoon politikon‘,
man needs stable social relationships in family and the polis with her laws. Only in a social
state man, being defective by nature, is able to realize his potentials. In the same way, he
and his fellow-citizens need laws to complete themselves, being without them excluded
from his real destiny.46
With reference to this, Varnhagen utilizes his knowledge of the Indians and their
culture to assign to them their adequate place as ‚Savages‘ or ‚Barbarians‘ in the history of
human evolution. He gets even with the idealistic poets of his time and some philosophical
tendencies since the eighteenth century, namingly Rousseau, who see in the ‚civilizational‘
progress a decline and who praise the ‚Savage‘ as a highlight of human development by
taking up the ‚Dispute of the New World‘ of the past century. In the middle of the
eighteenth century there had started a discussion about the judgement of the New World,
its fauna, flora and people. This discussion was aroused by the Count de Buffon and
Cornelius de Pauw who considered in their works the American world inferior to the
European, provoking this way the embittered resistance of, among others, Spanish
American scholars.47 Varnhagen refers to this dispute and, contrary to his Spanish
American neighbours some decades before, is on Buffon‘s side. Considering the real
Indians, as they present themselves in the ‚Historia Geral do Brasil‘ it is incomprehensible
how there could still be poets and philosophers – Rousseau is here explicitly mentioned –
who see in the ‚Savage‘ an ideal for humanity.
À vista do esboço que traçamos, sem nada carregar as cores, não sabemos como haja
ainda poetas, e até filósofos, que vejam no estado selvagem a maior felicidade do
homem; quando nesse estado, sem o auxílio mútuo da sociedade, e sem a terra se
cultivar suficientemente, há sempre, numa ou outra época, privações e fome [...]. As
leis a que o homem quis voluntariamente sujeitar-se, depois de mui tristes sofrimentos
do mesquinho gênero humano antes de as possuir, não têm outro fim senão fazê-lo
mais livre e mais feliz do que seria sem elas. O próprio Filósofo de Genebra, apesar de
suas paradoxais simpatias pelo estado selvagem, não duvidou reconhecer as vantagens
de substituirmos a justiça e o direito e a razão ao instinto, ao apetite e ao capricho; de
vermos desenvolvidas as faculdades, ampliadas as idéias e “um animal estúpido e
limitado convertido em um ser inteligente, – em um homem!” Assim é que com razão
disse Buffon: „Se vivemos tranqüilos e somos fortes ... se dominamos o Universo, é
45
Varnhagen, História (1981), vol. 1, p. 51. It is striking that, with the exception of one little paragraph (p. 32), Varnhagen
pays no attention to physiognomic categories to describe the ‚indios‘ as it was common in Europe at that time. For the
significance of physiognomical criteria in late Eighteenth-and Nineteenth-Century Europe see Bitterli, ‚Wilden‘, pp. 345356.
46
For the significance of the Aristotelian anthropology in the discussion about the American Indians in the Early Modern
Age see Hanke, Aristoteles, and Pagden, Fall, pp. 68-74.
10
porque soubemos dominar-nos a nós mesmos ..., sujeitando-nos às leis ... O homem
não é homem (prossegue eloqüentemente este grande gênio) senão porque soube unirse com o homem, sob a autoridade de um governo“.
O selvagem, cercado sempre de perigos, não sabe o que seja tranqüilidade d’alma: de
tudo tem que prevenir-se e recear-se; fica desconfiado de caráter, e inábil de pensar
sequer em concorrer para melhorar a situação da humanidade.48
Varnhagen‘s analysis of the Indian’s culture does not want simply to intervene in a
philosophical debate of the past century. Moreover, this analysis looks in the first place for
quite practical conclusions. The permanent vagrancy makes it impossible to speak of a real
occupancy of the land which anyway has been unpopulated for the most part. Only the
European colonization, bringing with it the cultivation of land by Africans transported to
Brazil, created most of the settlements and towns and so a constant increase of population.
This, in turn, caused until the present days a constantly increasing number of population
which multiplied tenfold compared to that of the Indians in 1500. The ‚indios‘ on the other
side could never establish ties to a determinated part of land. Their permanent state of war
which continued to split them in little groups impedes also that there could rise something
like a kind of patriotism. The ‚indios‘ were by this way unable to develop a notion of
community which transcends the limits of the own tribe and much less a notion of nation.49
The work of Varnhagen shows also that it is not only a simple invective against
indianism. The historical consideration shall make possible an unbiased judgement and
enable to give the Indian his adequate role in the Brazilian past. Part of this is the
recognition of the performances made by the Indians in the process of Portuguese
colonization. The first settlers adopted Indian habits such as smoking tobacco or the
cultivation of corn, manioc and other plants but also clearing woodland by fire, the way of
building their houses, hunting and fishing techniques. Even the habit to take frequent bathes
and the ready use of hammocks made part of a process of adaption by Portugueses to the
new circunstances necessary for the effective establishment in the new territory.50 The
Indian’s real siginificance for Brazilian history, however, lies not there. The Portuguese
colonization was an almost exclusively male enterprise. These men soon after their arrival
in America joined with Indian women. A lot of these couples weren’t blessed by church
and there also existed cases of bigamy, but Varnhagen doesn’t mind. These alliances
between the Portuguese and Indians and their descendants played an important role in the
colony’s formative years since it was the Indian’s biological assimilation by the Portuguese
rather than their violent extermination which contributed to the vanishing of the Indian type
47
The fundamental work about this dispute is still Gerbi, Dispute; see also Brading, America, pp. 422-464.
Varnhagen, História (1981), vol. 1, pp. 52/53.
49
Ibidem, p. 24.
50
Ibidem, pp. 212-214.
48
11
and the creation of a new one. This gradual cross-breeding of races was it what „fez que a
americana não se exterminasse em parte alguma, mas antes se cruzasse e refundisse.“51
Especially for the early phase of colonization Varnhagen draws the picture of an
harmonic cohabitation between ‚indios‘ and Portugueses, praising also the ‚civilizational‘
effects which emanated from the European settlers, while not willing to condemn the
misuses committed against the Indians. The ‚resgate‘, however, the enslavement of Indians
captured in war, makes not part of this misuses. Although he condemns the role of the
‚bandeirantes‘ in enslaving the Indians, he recognizes their performances in the conquest of
the immense Brazilian territory. There can be made, however, no objection to an
enslavement sanctioned by the state. Such an enslavement is even demanded, and this in an
double sense. Here, Varnhagen‘s indignation turns against the Jesuits and their supposed
philanthropy. As long as the captured Indians lived with their European masters in a kind of
‚encomienda‘, who profited were not only the masters by the work done by the Indians, but
also the very ‚indios‘. Only under the tutelage of higher ‚civilized‘ people, the Indians
could be gradually elevated from ‚barbarism‘.
Foi a experiência e não o arbítrio nem a tirania, quem ensinou o verdadeiro modo de
levar os Bárbaros, impondo-lhes à força a necessária tutela, para aceitarem o
christianismo, e adotarem hábitos civilizados; começando pelos de alguma resignação
e caridade, fazendo-se moralmente melhores; aproveitando-se de mais bens, incluindo
os da tranquilidade de espírito e da segurança individual, à sombra de leis protetoras.52
The Jesuits by their equivocal philanthropy withdrew the ‚indios‘ from the influence of
‚civilization‘. As in Spanish America, also in Brazil the Indians were given to the Jesuits‘
tutelage and this way only ‚civilized‘ by the very cumbersome mean of catechizing.
Varnhagen is unwilling to see in this tutelage more than hipocrisy, personified in the figure
of Bartolomé de las Casas. The Portuguese lost many hands and the ‚indios‘ remained on
their low ‚civilizational‘ level. Even worse, the hands the settlers lacked, became
compensated by Africans about whose enslavement the Jesuits did not care.
Era uma verdadeira monomania do pseudo-filantrópico Las Casas a de deixar aos
Americanos todos no mesmo estado em que estavam; pois que a verdadeira filantropia
ou o amor da humanidade não era quem o movia, quando ele por outro lado pregava a
conveniência da escravidão africana, e em 1511 lembrava, para haver mais escravos,
51
52
Ibidem, p. 215
Ibidem, p. 219.
12
que não pagassem direitos os Africanos que se levassem à América! Nem que o seu
propósito fosse transportar à mesma América toda a Etiópia.53
As a result, dangers for society like moral degradation, disobedience and irreligiousity
came to Brazil in form of Africans equally ‚Barbarian‘ as the ‚indios‘, but more
supersticious than these.54
What is at stake here for Varnhagen is not to settle accounts of debts active and
passive. Like all historians since Thukydides, Varnhagen is guided exclusively by the
pursuit of imparciality55 and truth, „alma da história“56 . This effort leads him to a quite
differenciated even though not very favourable image of the Indian which incorporates
them in a dynamic process of Brazilian history. This process conceives Brazilian history as
the formation of a society, caracterized by the confluence of three elements as he was
drafted already by Martius in his essay on Brazilian historiography. The leading role is
reserved to the Europeans, while the ‚indios‘ plays only a secondary role. This, however
does not imply a simple and gross indifference towards the Indians‘ historical role. The
definition of the Indian as it was given in the ‚História Geral do Brasil‘ is, however,
incompatible with the task this work put for itself, that is to show “como veio a surgir [...]
um novo Império a figurar no Orbe entre as nações civilizadas, regido por uma das
primeiras dinastias de nossos tempos“. 57 As an subject of ‘civilization’, but not as its
driving force, the Indians are, notwithstanding their merits, incapable to serve as the
nation’s foundation.
In the year 1857, the very same in which the first edition of his ‚História Geral do
Brasil‘ was published, Varnhagen writes from Madrid a letter to the same Martius who
gave him with his essay about Brazilian historiography a blueprint for his own work and in
whose studies on the Indians he showed a lifelong interest. In this letter, Varnhagen
undertakes a sum of his interest in the origin, religion and lifestyle of the Brazilian Indians.
He also confesses the motif of this interest which is the search for the possible sources of
Brazil. Both, the knowledge of the ‚indio‘ and the pursuit to build a firm ground for the
Brazilian nation, are at the end irreconcilable. The Indians are the subject of his History of
Brazil
para mostrar que nelles não pode estar a nacionalid.e brazil.a e as glorias nacionaes,
qd.o somos regidos p.r um sob. o de dynastica europea, qd. o falamos portuguez, quando
53
Ibidem, p. 220. In his indignation about the Jesuits, Varnhagen overlooks that Las Casas was not a Jesuit at all, but
belonged to the order of the Dominicans. This vehement attack on the Jesuits may be dued to the ‚Tratados‘‘s third text,
where Soares de Souza had already condemned the Jesuits‘ Indian policy, see Monteiro, Heathen Castes, p. 699.
54
For the caracterization of the Africans and for the influence of slavery for the colony’s development see Varnhagen,
História (1981), vol. 1, pp. 222-231, esp. pp. 226/227.
55
Francisco Adolfo Varnhagen, Dedicatoria a Sua Magestade Imperial o Senhor D. Pedro II, in: idem, História (1927),
vol. 1, p. V.
56
Varnhagen, Prologo, p. X.
57
Varnhagen, História (1981), vol. 1, p. 67.
13
somos christãos (religião dos colonos da Europa), qd. o temos leis e codigos da Europa,
qd.o é mais glorioso entroncar nossa civilisação na nação portugueza abraçada com a
cruz de christo, q[ue] na selvageria canibal, e qd. o finalm. os Tupinambas nem se quer
eram os donos legitimos da terra q[ue] alem de habitarem nomades, haviam invadido
expulsando outros.58
III. Conclusion
As in Europe or in Spanish-America in the nineteenth century, with the formation
and consolidation of the nation-state in Brazil historiography as a central agent of national
self-comprehension played an important role.59 Contrary, however,
to the Spanish
American countries, where precolumbian high cultures had existed and the tensions
between European Spaniards and Creoles were sharpening especially towards the end of the
colonial era, the evocation of an emblematic ‚indio‘ simultaneously neglecting the real one
did not occur in Brazil.60 There, where the Portuguese court had taken refuge from the
napoleonic troops advancing on Lisbon in 180861 and where also after independence a
monarch of a Portuguese dynasty presided the state, the ‚indio‘ in historiography could not
gain any symbolical meaning for the newly-created nation.
Although unable to be idealized, the ‚indio‘, however, was not simply excluded
from the history of Brazil, but flees also a one-sided disdain and remains worthy a
„apreciação, que se afasta de ambos esses extremos“62 . As a ‚Savage‘ or a ‚Barbarian‘ he
could not become the origin of the nation, being however capable to ‚civilize‘ and by this to
be a subject of a historiographical discourse which conceived Brazilian history as a process
of ‚civilization‘.63 The Indian past did not serve to assure the country’s roots, but to shed
light a process which is going on until the present and which indicates to a future to be
made up. The ‚indio‘ remained in historical thought always a real figure and so a part of a
concept of societal development as it was discussed also in other Latin American countries
as well.64 This concept refers to an idea of a nation conceived as a process which will be
58
Francisco Adolfo Varnhagen, Letter from Varnhagen to Martius [Madrid 13. 5. 1857], Bayerische Staatsbibliothek,
Handschriften- und Inkunabelabteilung, Martiusiana II, A, 2. Underlines are original.
59
For the connection between history and nation in Germany see Wolfgang Hardtwig, Geschichtskultur und Wissenschaft,
Munich 1990, esp. ch. 7; for Spanish America see besides the work cited in footnote 2 also Nikita Harwich Vallenilla,
Construction d’une identité nationale: le discours historiographique du Vénézuéla au XIXe siècle, in: Caravelle. Cahiers
du monde hispanique et luso-brésilien 62 (1994), pp. 241-256; Michael Riekenberg, Nationbildung: sozialer Wandel und
Geschichtsbewusstsein am Rio de la Plata (1810-1916) (=Americana Eystettensia, vol. 6), Frankfurt/Main 1995.
60
For Spanish America see König, Mythisierung, pp. 371/372 and Guerra, Introduction, in: idem (ed.), Mémoires, p. 21.
61
For the transfer of the Portuguese Court to Rio de Janeiro see Kirsten Schultz, Tropical Versailles, Empire, Monarchy,
and the Portuguese Royal Court in Rio de Janeiro, 1808-1821, New York, London 2001.
62
Joaquim Manuel de Macedo, Lições de História do Brasil para uzo dos alumnos do Imperial Collegio de Pedro
Segundo, Rio de Janeiro 1861, p. 58.
63
The author is currently working on the concept of ‚civilization‘, its origin in enlightment-inspired historical thought and
its meaning for projects of societal development in Brazil 1808-1871.
64
Manuela Carneiro da Cunha, Política indigenista no século XIX, in: idem (org.), História dos índios no Brasil, São
Paulo 1992, pp. 133-154. For the discussion in other Latin American coutnries see Frank Safford, Race, Integration, and
Progress: Elite Attitudes and the Indian in Colombia, 1750-1870, in: Hispanic American Historical Review 71/1 (1991),
14
completed only in future65 , without, however, needing the colonial past as a negative
contrast.66
Such a notion of national history and the role the ‚indio‘ occupies in it, leads to
further considerations. It can be asked to what extent processes of nation-building in Latin
America can be understood in the perspective of intellectual history only or as an exclusive
nationalism of elites which forbids the ‚indios‘ to become part of the nation or as an
imagined communitiy.67 Considering the role of history as a crucial agent of national selfconception, the question also arises to what extent such a national image was able to make
his way against other models and forms of representation. The ‚pátria‘ remained in some
Brazilian regions side by side with the nation a quite vivid value which also after
independence could be sure to attract loyalty on a large scale. This ‚pátria’ developed a
considerable capability to resist efforts starting from Rio de Janeiro to supersede and to cut
off this loyalty in favour of a national horizon comprising all Brazil in its totality.68 In this
context, the ‚pátria‘ could be personified by a close relative of the ‚indio‘, the ‚caboclo‘,
and become a „demotic figure“.69 Another point touches the relationship between
historiography and literature. As well as historiography, literature with her „Foundational
Fictions“ tried to project her own ideas of the nation and made often and readily use of the
pp. 1-33; Jochen Meißner, ‚Extinguir‘ oder ‚Educar‘. Der ‚Indio‘ im Elitendiskurs der mexikanischen Zeitungspresse des
19. Jahrhunderts, in: Stefan Karlen, Andreas Wimmer (eds.), Integration und Transformation. Ethnische Gemeinschaften,
Staat und Weltwirtschaft in Lateinamerika seit ca. 1850, Stuttgart 1996, pp. 163-180; Andrés Guerrero, The Construction
of a Ventriloquist’s Image: Liberal Discourse and the ‚Miserable Indian Race‘ in Late 19th-Century Ecuador, in: Journal
of Latin American Studies 29 (1997), pp.555-590; Mark Francis, The „Civilizing“ of Indigenous People in NineteenthCentury Canada, in: Journal of World History 9/1 (1998), pp. 51-87; Ulrich Mücke, La desunión imaginada. Indios y
nación en el Perú decimonónico, in: Jahrbuch für Geschichte Lateinamerikas 36 (1999), pp. 219-232; Ursula Heimann,
Liberalismus, ethnische Vielfalt und Nation. Zum Wandel des Indio-Begriffs in der liberalen Presse in Mexiko, 18211876 (=Studien zur modernen Geschichte, vol. 55), Stuttgart 2002.
65
Varnhagen, Dedicatoria, p. VI. The idea that the nation should be formed corresponding to the leading concept of
‚civilization‘ continued during the whole nineteenth century, being a crucial concept also in Euclides da Cunha; for this
see Berthold Zilly, Sertão e nacionalidade: formação étnica e civilizatória do Brasil segundo Euclides da Cunha, in:
Estudos Sociedade e Agricultura 12 (April 1999), pp. 5-45. For the ‚civilization‘ as a task in the selfconception of the
Brazilian state since independence see Jeffrey D. Needell, The Domestic Civilizing Mission: The Cultural Role of the
State in Brazil, 1808-1930, in: Luso-Brazilian Review 36/1 (1999), pp. 1-18.
66
The evocation of a promissing future was also a commonplace in Spanish American thought, but was there connected to
a negatively labeled history of the colonial era, see Leopoldo Zea, The Latin American Mind, Norman 1963, p. 19.
67
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London 19912,
mentions, among other countries, Brazil as an example for such a imagined community, putting the country in a row with
Argentina and the United States of America, which had excluded the Indians from the nation even at the price of
exterminating them (p. 14), while nevertheless nationalism in Brazil is supposed to have developed later than in Spanish
America (p. XIII). As an other example for an imagined community serves to Anderson Peru (pp. 49/50), while Charles F.
Walker, The Patriotic Society: Discussions and Omissions about Indians in the Peruvian War of Independence, in: The
Americas 55/2 (1998), pp. 275-298, emphasizes the indifferece of the Peruvian elite towards the Indians in the early
Nineteenth century. That both assertions are not true shows Mücke, Desunión, pp. 219-232. For images of nation in
Nineteenth-Century Spanish America see François-Xavier Guerra, Monica Quijada (eds.), Imaginar la nación
(=Cuadernos de Historia Latinoamericana, Nr. 2), Münster, Hamburg 1994.
68
The fact that in Brazil the state preceded the nation and the latter‘s difficulties to impose itself emphasize Roderick J.
Barman, Brazil: The Forging of a Nation, 1798-1852, Stanford 1988 and Richard Graham, Constructing a Nation in
Nineteenth-Century Brazil: Old and New Views on Class, Culture, and the State, in: The Journal of the Historical Society
1/2-3 (2001), pp. 17-56. The problematic relationship between local or regional loyalty to the ‚pátria‘ and the
identification with the Brazilian nation in total is presented in the example of the Dois de Julho civic rituals in Salvador da
Bahia by Hendrik Kraay, Between Brazil and Bahia: Celebrating Dois de Julho in Nineteenth-Century Salvador, in:
Journal of Latin American Studies 31/2 (1999), pp. 255-286, esp. pp. 275-286.
69
Ibidem, pp. 260 and 265/266.
15
‚indio‘.70 Finally, it might be inquired into the longevity of this historiographical image of
the Indian. Under the nationalist Vargas regime since the 1930‘s, the ‚indio‘ witnessed a
historical revalorization in his contribution to the construction of Brazil, being at the same
time still necessary, however, to incorporate him into the nation and to consider the Indian
as the subject of the state’s developmental efforts.71
Anyhow, all these questions have to keep in mind the fact that an assimilation of the
Indian past for the historical self-conception of the young Brazilian nation could not be
possible. The historiography of Ninteenth-Century Brazil and with her the nation itself was
not willing to draw on the ‚indio‘.
70
David Haberly, Three Sad Races: Racial Identity and National Consciousness in Brazilian Literature, Cambridge 1983;
David Brookshaw, Race and Color in Brazilian Literature, Metuchen, New Jersey 1986; idem, Paradise Betrayed:
Brazilian Literature of the Indian, Amsterdam 1989; Doris Sommer, Foundational Fictions. The National Romances of
Latin America, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford 1991 (esp. ch. 5).
71
Seth Garfield, Commentary. ‚The Roots of a Plant that today is Brazil‘: Indians and the Nation-State under the Brazilian
Estado Novo, in: Journal of Latin American Studies 29 (1997), pp. 747-768, esp. pp. 751-758.