O O MITO DOS ÍNDIOS BRABOS

OS PURI NAS FRONTEIRAS DOS SERTÕES DE CAMPO ALEGRE DA PARAÍBA NOVA.

Abstract

At the end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th, Campo Alegre was an extensive region that geographically occupied part of the Paraíba Valley. This Valley comprised the entire former captaincy and the current State of Rio de Janeiro, in the so-called Macro Region of the Paraíba Fluminense Valley. In the 17th century, this hinterland region was inhabited by Indians who did not speak the general language, and therefore, different from the other ethnic groups on the coast who were called as “angry or brave Indians”. So these countryside areas were known as “Sertões dos Índios Brabos”. A border region inhabited by several ethnic groups, mainly by the Puri Indians. In the 18th century, with the arrival of the colonizer, this region of the Valley became known as Campo Alegre da Paraíba Nova. This article intends to analyze the symbolic frontier of the hinterlands of the old Campo Alegre, a place that was mostly inhabited by the Puri Indians, and the construction of the Myth of the Brabos Indians of the Sertões of Campo Alegre of Paraíba Nova.