The text "Potiguara Ethnohistory" has its title inspired by the magnificent work of anthropologist Frans Moonen and Luciano Mariz Maia (2008), "Ethnohistory of the Potiguara Indigenous People."
Similarly to the work referenced above, this study aims to bring topics recently forgotten about the Potiguara into the field of debate and research. Here, we seek to address and focus on events that occurred during the European invasion up until present-day Brazil from the Potiguara point of view.
It is a profound and extensive rereading of historical sources to, above all, tell the facts of Potiguara history from the Indigenous perspective, from the perspective of my people.
The idea is to awaken in the reader the spirit of a researcher and to propose topics to be studied, assist teachers of Ethnohistory, offer a source of bibliographic research on subjects related to the people, and, above all, awaken a taste for Potiguara historical knowledge.
The presentation of controversial and provocative topics is intentional. One of the main objectives is to bring the subject to academic circles and thus approach it with more clarity and information. Therefore, I strongly recommend that all bibliographical references presented here be reviewed and examined in light of an interpretive reflection, in order to to gain expertise and the ability to elaborate on the themes presented here with greater depth.
To claim that the Potiguara do not have history, culture, tradition, or language and that they lack documents about us that prove the referenced facts is a sign of laziness and dishonesty.
The ignorance of some cannot be the reference for all. The records are many and exist in surprising quantities; if there are people who ignore them, it is out of laziness to do research.
The Potiguara have history!
This work is conceived to help all who seek to learn a little more about the history of Paraíba, the history of Baía da Traição, and most importantly, the history of the Potiguara of Paraíba.
This text is the first in a collection of historical writings about the Potiguara people, which I propose to develop throughout my life. I have named it the "Potiguara Collection: Memory of a Nation." These works will serve to immortalize our achievements.
Who were and who are the Potiguara?
The Potiguara are one of the people that make up the great Tupi family. This nation inhabited and still inhabits northeastern Brazil for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans to the Americas. This native community resisted Portuguese invasion in the country's north for many years. They gained support from other Europeans, interested in trading brazilwood, who encouraged the Potiguara to fight back against Portuguese and Spanish settlers present on their lands.
This nation was part of the feared Tupinambá, a people who considered themselves direct descendants of the first settlers of this land. Their name means, according to Navarro (2015, p. 484), "all of the Tupi family." Formed from the combinations of "Tupi," the name of a primitive people, with "anama," which means family or nation, and "mbá," the nasal form of "pá," translated as totally, all, literally: "All of the Tupi family."
The ethnic groups, although they had specific names, always identified themselves as Tupinambá, and the Potiguara did the same.
Varnhagen used to say that if someone asked an indigenous person to which "race" they belonged, regardless of whether the indigenous person was from Maranhão or Pará, Bahia or Rio de Janeiro, the answer was invariably — Tupinambá Indian. Tupinambá was, thus, like a general name, which was modified as soon as there was a fragmentation of the group (Métraux, 1950, p. 11).
The same observation was made by Hans Staden in 1549 regarding the Tamoio, who introduced themselves as Tupinambá. He explained that other peoples also had different names, yet they were Tupinambá, for example, the Tabajara. He said: "The enemies to the south are the Carijós, and to the north, the Tupinambás. The latter are also called Tabajaras by their enemies, which simply means 'enemy'" (Staden, 2008, p. 56).
Currently, the Potiguara inhabit a small area of land that remains from their former territory, which extended along the northeastern coast. These Potiguara settlements are present in three states: Paraíba (the largest of all), Rio Grande do Norte, and Ceará. In Paraíba, the Potiguara territory constitutes three Indigenous lands composed of small communities spread throughout its extension, totaling about 32 aldeamentos (villages), which are present in the municipalities of Baía da Traição, Marcação, and Rio Tinto.
The three lands are the Potiguara Indigenous Land (or São Miguel), Jacaré de São Domingos Indigenous Land, and the Monte-mor Indigenous Land, located on the northern coast of the state, situated between the Camaratuba River to the north and the Mamanguape River to the south. It is estimated that there is a total of 33,757 hectares of land inhabited by the Potiguara, with approximately 22,000 Indigenous people in their territory.
Their name is of Tupi origin, an ancient language they spoke and were forced to replace with Portuguese at the end of the 18th century. Potiguara is the joining of two Tupi words: "Potĩ," which means shrimp, with "Gûara," eater, that is, shrimp eater. It is recorded: "Potiguara would be in Tupí 'Shrimp Eater,'" Prado wrote (1937, p. 126).
When white people appeared on the coast of Paraíba, the Tupis who were settled on the coast took the name of potiguaras, or shrimp eaters, given the number of crustaceans found on the beaches of the region (Prado, 1964, p. 48).
The region where the Potiguaras lived, and still live today, is an area of abundant shrimp. The rivers and the sea are rich in these crustaceans. As Prado (1937) explained, perhaps this factor influenced the origin of their name, because they were skilled fishermen.
They constitute the only people present in the same territory since the European invasion of present-day Brazil, symbolizing resistance against various attempts at extermination throughout history. This fact is of valuable historical importance for the events that occurred and marked the development of present-day Brazil. They fight and resist to this day to recover their lands and rights, which they have been denied for many years.
Some Indigenous peoples were deliberately exterminated by the settlers, who aimed at destroying specific nations to acquire their territories. This was documented by Fernão Cardim in his accounts from 1583 to 1590 regarding the Viatã people, who inhabited the region neighboring the Potiguara and maintained an alliance with them. He explains that the Portuguese consciously transmigrated these people to the area of Pernambuco, where they were enslaved and became extinct.
Near these people lived a great multitude of gentiles that they call Viatã, of whom there are none left, because as they were friends of the potiguaras and relatives, the Portuguese made them enemies among themselves, giving them [something] to eat, so that in this way they could wage war on them and have them as slaves, and finally, there being a great famine, the Portuguese, instead of helping them, captured them and sent boats full of them to sell to other captaincies: joining this was a magical Portuguese clergyman, who with his deceptions carried them all to Pernambuco, and thus this nation ended, and, the Portuguese were left without neighbors to defend them from the potiguaras [...] (1925, p. 93).
Besides the Portuguese, the ancient Viatã [People] were transmigrated from their place, causing their total extinction — one of the greatest genocides purposely practiced by the colonizers. These former allies of the Potiguara were manipulated into becoming enemies, with colonizers offering them up to be devoured in their rituals, exemplifying what Darcy Ribeiro termed “the progressive extermination.”
Regarding the Potiguara of Paraíba, former Secretary of Education Sebastião Guimarães Viana wrote in 1992, in the presentation of the work "Potiguara Ethnohistory," by Frans Moonen:
It is the fifth most numerous Indigenous People and the most densely concentrated. It is, still, the only Indigenous People that continues to inhabit the Brazilian coast, of the millions that populated our coast (1992, p. 08).
The resistance of the Potiguara and their permanence in their territory, even in the face of adversities imposed on their society, demonstrates and proves how determined they were and are to resist the imposition of non-Indigenous people’s tortures and massacres; and, from a particular perspective, to resist amidst the exile that they suffered throughout the greedy European expansion.
These native warriors, although in reduced numbers, are still important characters in the historical context of the state of Paraíba. They are living cultural heritage dating back to a bloody past that haunts the construction of the so-called Brazilian society, where the majority of the population are children of the violence practiced against these natives.
Even though they bear the stigma of miscegenation imposed by the abuses and rapes practiced by the invaders, they carry the warrior-descended pure blood of the owners of this territory. Therefore, they resist and exist in their place as the actual hosts who will never abandon what is rightfully theirs.
What was the Potiguara language?
Prior to the invasions and exterminations of the Indigenous nations that lived here — whether through massacres by guns and swords, epidemics, or other factors that contributed to their historical genocide — numerous distinct languages existed throughout the 'New World,' each belonging to different peoples and representing diverse linguistic families.
A single language was spoken along the entire Brazilian coast, Tupi, which was the language that predominated throughout the region where the first contact between the invaders and the natives of this land occurred. Although there were some groups of natives from the Jê linguistic family, such as the Goitacazes in Rio de Janeiro, the Tupi linguistic family was the most common. Even though there was some variation in pronunciation and the way of naming something, Tupi speakers could understand each other.
There were approximately three linguistic families throughout Brazil: Old Tupi, Jê, and Nua-Aruak (also known as Arawak). These families were divided throughout the national territory, and each had its own form of organization, religious rites, and various customs that were different from one another, thus constituting the true Brazilian population.
The Tupi family is the largest group, consisting of 8 linguistic families — the various tribes of this family spoke 26 languages. The Jê family has five linguistic families from a set of 16 tribal languages. The Aruak family consists of two language families, grouping 13 languages spoken by the tribes belonging to it. Finally, anthropologists emphasize the approximate existence of 10 other language families not yet grouped due to the existing dispersion and diversity (Sarmento, 1999, p. 42).
The territory now known as Brazil was a kind of Babel, possessing varied dialects and distinct customs among each population group, which makes this territory unique and culturally diverse compared to the rest of the world. Because the nations belonging to the Tupi family were in the process of expansion at the time of the arrival of non-Indigenous people in Brazilian territory, it was easy to verify the similarity of the language spoken among the natives even though there were cultural distinctions between them.
Since the earliest times of colonization in Brazil, it was found that the same language was spoken on the Brazilian coast, from Pará to the south of the country, approximately to the parallel of 27 degrees (according to information from the chronicler Pero de Magalhães Gândavo). Cardim tells us that Tupiniquins, Potiguaras, Tupinambás, Temiminós, Caetés, Tabajaras, Tamoios, Tupinaés, etc. spoke this language. Since the 16th century and even more in the 17th century, the Portuguese have given it the designation of Brazilian language. It had some dialectal variants. What would have been the name given by the Indigenous people to this coastal language? The ancient texts do not clarify. Only in the 19th century did the term Tupi become current to designate it (Navarro, 2015, p. 11).
Navarro’s 2015 quote above shows that the language was general and common throughout the coast, varying in ways of addressing a few things. Moreover, the Tupi language lacks some letters that did not exist in the vocabulary of the natives but were present in that of the Portuguese, as recorded by Gandavo (2008). As such, it was also different from the Portuguese language of the settlers in this aspect.
The language of these gentiles along the coast is one: it lacks three letters, F, L, and R, which is a thing worthy of astonishment because thus they have no Faith, nor Law, nor King [Rei], and in this manner they live without Justice and disorderly (Gandavo, 2008, p. 65).
I will deal with Gandavo's prejudiced speech in a later chapter, where I will work on related issues. His quote also demonstrates the expansion of the language spoken by the inhabitants of this immense territory and its particularities in relation to the Portuguese language.
Therefore, the language that belonged to and still belongs to the Potiguara nation is Old Tupi, given that it was common among the Indigenous people of the entire Brazilian coast. Besides the similarities regarding the spoken language, the Potiguara had customs that were identical to those of other peoples who dominated the rest of the coast.
On a particular occasion, Sousa stated, in his work "Descriptive Treatise of Brazil" that the Potiguaras "speak the language of the Tupinambás and Caetés; they have the same customs and gentilities" (1851, p. 62). Besides him, it is also possible to find among the writings of Vasconcellos (1865) these similarities between the language of the Potiguara and the other peoples: "The Tobayaras do not have a different language from the Potigoares, nor from the Tupinambá, nor the Tamoyos, nor the Carijós, and they were, however, different nations" (Vasconcellos, 1865, p. 16).
These nations that extended throughout the coast from north to south, who spoke the same language and were related, having almost the same customs, were divided into two groups, the Tupiniquim and the Tupinambá. Although they were subdivided into two categories, as seen above, both belong to the Tupi family. These peoples were legitimate relatives who cultivated a kind of endless feud with each other, which for many centuries was the cause of several wars. Regarding the subject, Capistrano (2009) wrote:
From Paraíba in the north to S. Vicente in the south, the coast was occupied by peoples speaking the same language, coming from the same origin, having the same customs, but deeply divided by irreconcilable hatreds into two groups; one called itself Tupiniquim, and the other Tupinambá (Abreu, 2009, p. 28).
Old Tupi is the original language of the Potiguara people. It was prohibited and replaced by the Portuguese crown through the decree made by the Marquis of Pombal, Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, on August 17, 1758, when he made Portuguese the official language of Brazil and prohibited the teaching of Tupi throughout the country. Until then, Tupi was the language spoken throughout the national territory, from the settlers to the natives, both communicated in this general language.
The Jesuits were the greatest propagators of Tupi among Europeans, which Pombal perceived as disobedience to the crown's orders. Because they diverged from Portugal's interests, the Jesuits were definitively expelled from Brazil in 1759. This act led to the end, or rather, to the near-extinction of the language of the native and true Brazilians who lived here.
Indeed, many authors, non-Indigenous anthropologists, and authorities of Indigenist organizations have affirmed that the Potiguara no longer spoke their language at the end of the last century, including accounts given in reports of the Serviço de Proteção ao Índio (SPI, Service of the Protection of the Indian). Alípio Bandeira writes in one such 1920 report that “they lost all of the language of the ancestors,” while Dagoberto Castro e Silva, writing in 1923, puts it even more radically, reporting having not found an Amerindian who could speak even a single word of Old Tupi: “I did not find a single one of those Indigenous persons, even amongst the eldest and most distinguished, that knew even a word of the dialect spoken at one time by the Potiguara” (Monnen, Maia, 2008, p. 189).
Affirmations like these – criminal, prejudiced, and replete with Eurocentric ideas about natives — were and continue to be ways of obfuscating the rights of the Indigenous to their territory. If they possess neither their language nor their culture, they are no longer Indigenous. It was and is at this flattening space that white people always put the Potiguara, as ‘ex-Indigenous,’ a people without their own culture, thus causing a disassociation with what it is that they really are: owners of the land. Indeed, the atrocities practiced and supported by the old SPI are clearly denounced in the investigative Figueiredo Report of 1967.
With respect to the language of the Potiguara, it was not suddenly extinguished in 1758, it perdured for a certain period that is unknown. A language does not disappear in the length of a day, it moves, suffering changes across time to the extent that a subject opts to migrate to a different language.
There are accounts, for example, of the speech of José Augusto da Silva, in 1981, in a seminar about the Historical Rights of the Indigenous in São Paulo, pointing to the many calamities practiced by the government of the state and by the Fundação Nacional dos Povos Indígenas (FUNAI, National Foundation of Indigenous Peoples), confirming that professors of the old organization, the SPI, were responsible for the almost-extinction of their language. About this account, Almeida writes:
José Augusto da Silva – Indigenous Potiguara. Represented the [Potiguara] Nation in the Seminar on the Historical Rights of the Indigenous, realized in São Paulo between the 26th and 29th of April, 1981. He accused the government of Paraíba and FUNAI of having promoted the division of the Potiguara. He spoke about a trip that was made to Rio de Janeiro in order to verify the work situation of the Potiguaras employed in a shipyard on the Ilha do Governador. He said that he didn’t like it. Finally, he spoke of the almost-disappeared language that was spoken by his ancestors, accusing the professors of the old SPI [of its endangerment] (Indigenous Heroes of Brazil, 1988, p. 87).
There is another account of a Potiguara elder, born in and resident of the São Francisco aldeia, known as Seu Tonhô. He spoke at an interview given to a group of Potiguara professors of the Tupi language, on February 26, 2023, about something that happened with his grandfather and also with his father, that would have occurred sometime between roughly 1910 and 1920:
In the time of my father, the time of Professor Chaves and Mané de Araújo, the first two professors that came to that school there in the south, those men, Dad said that he suffered a lot [under the corporal punishment of] kneeling, kneeling on three kernels of corn, so that he would stop with that nauseating talk. “You all are with the ugly talk, that nauseating talk; you all have to learn to speak our language [Portuguese]! Why do you say such a thing?” Then, my dad said that “the speech of our People was such” “[...] but you have to stop with that!” Then he would go punish [them], there in a room with three kernels of corn beneath the knee as punishment in order to learn. They who ended our language was that very same SPI, and it was FUNAI that when they arrived they were demanding that we rescue the language that we had to learn, but the class had already forgotten, right? Many no longer wanted to speak, it was exactly that. After FUNAI understood this, they wanted to rekindle it again, but then it was us who no longer wanted to know more about it (Interview with Seu Tonhô, recorded in February 2023, Tupi Potiguara Kuapa Araújo, Romildo José).
Faced with testimonies like the one seen above, it is impossible to believe in a discourse based on the mere inferences of non-Indigenous researchers, given that the natives, for fear of oppression imposed by those organizations, in fear of reprisal on their part, withheld from using expressions — however loose and vague — of the old language, thus giving the impression that they had forgotten completely.
When Dagoberto says he did not find an Indigenous person who knew how to say ‘even a word of the dialect once spoken by the Potiguara,’ he commits an error and demonstrates ignorance about the Tupi language. If they did not know, nor did not know how to speak even a single word, how can the fact be explained that fish, birds, objects, instruments, foods, expressions, names of people, etc. are in Tupi?
Although they did not use the language as a form of communication because of fear of retaliation, it was always present, indeed, in their usual way of speaking and beneath the mixture of two languages: Portuguese and Tupi. As such, from generation to generation, knowledge of the language was lost little by little, gradually — not ‘suddenly’ as white people announce.
Today, Tupi has resurged amongst the Potiguara and returned to form part of dialogues, expressions, poems, and music, primarily amongst the youth. They are already doing rituals, including the sacred toré, in Tupi-Potiguara, a new language that was born from Old Tupi, presenting ways of communicating that are the Potiguara’s own.
Where did Potiguara territory extend to?
According to chroniclers, travelers of the time of the invasions, and also contemporary historians,the affirmation is unanimous that the Potiguara dominated a long strip of land on the coastal stretch of the northern region of current Brazil.
Although there are, at times, divergences with respect to where Potiguara land began and ended, the fact is that its settlement was one of the largest present in the then-‘New World,’ and they possessed a great deal of control over it, thus rendering difficult any invasion and control on the part of the Portuguese.
That People [the Potiguara] was considered historically the ‘masters of Paraíba,’ such was their control and expansion in the territory, a population that surpassed the rest of the nations that inhabited the coast. Inseparable allies of the French, they were feared by the Portuguese and Spanish due to their war power, extremely advanced for an Indigenous nation, (a subject that will be discussed in another chapter).
The first of that language are called Potiguaras, masters of Paraíba, thirty leagues from Pernambuco, owners of the best wood in Brazil and great friends of the French, and with them they have contracted until now, marrying with them their daughters (Cardim, 1925, p. 93).
In the majority of the accounts that refer to the Potiguara, they always describe us as being the masters of the lands of Paraíba and owners of the vast territory. Even though there were other Indigenous peoples close to them, few were the references to them, giving priority and prominence to the feared Potiguara.
It is historical consensus that the Indigenous Potiguara inhabited the Brazilian coast between the states of Paraíba and Rio Grande do Norte, in an extension of approximately 1680 kilometers (400 leagues), that date to the period anterior to the occupation of Brazil by the Portuguese that began in 1500 (Kouryh, 2018, p. 123).
The Potiguara, belonging to the vast nation of the Tupi, those ardent warriors dominated a long stretch of coastal land running from the Sanhauá River, in Paraíba, until the banks of the Acaraú River, in Ceará, according to Eduardo Bueno: “Their territory extended from the Acaraú River (100 kilometers to the north of Curu) until the heights of the current city of João Pessoa (nearly 600 kilometers to the south)” (Bueno, 2019, p. 16).
According to other researchers and anthropologists, the home territory of the Potiguara is considered a little bit longer than that referred to by Bueno, surpassing the state of Ceará and extending into Maranhão, specifically the capital São Luís.
It can be observed in the research done about the Potiguara territory that there was a dominion that extended over almost the whole northern coast of Brazil. With respect to the extension of land where there was Potiguara presence, of extending into São Luís, in Maranhão, two researchers have written the following:
On the coast, Potiguara presence was intense, occupying an area that would equate in the present day to the perimeter that runs from João Pessoa, in Paraíba, to São Luís, in Maranhão. As the chroniclers of the era wrote, nearly 400 leagues. Or, in today’s numbers, a total of 1660 kilometers (Duarte, 2001, p. 17).
The other author who spoke of this question was Professor Frans Moonen, who wrote:
Potiguara was the denomination of the Indigenous people who in the sixteenth century inhabited the coast of the Northeast of Brazil, approximately between the current cities of João Pessoa, in Paraíba, and São Luís, in Maranhão and whose final remainders live currently in the municipality of Baía da Traição, on the northern coast of Paraíba. (Moonen, 1989, p. 93).
As seen earlier, the land of the Potiguara possessed an almost absurd dimension in relation to the territory that they inhabit now. It is historically proven by diverse and old sources that their territory began on the northern side of the Paraíba River and went on for an immense extension towards the north of the country.
A Jesuit father named Simão de Vasconcelos registered, for example, in his work “Chronicle of the Society of Jesus of the State of Brazil,” written in 1663 (pub. 1865) that the land of the Potiguara went until the Paraíba River. He said: “All of the district of the Rio Grande until Parahiba [sic] is inhabited by the Potigoar [sic] nation.”
Another account, even older than that of the cleric, is that of the German Hans Staden from 1549, when he came to fight against the French allies of the Potiguara, on the banks of the Paraíba River, an account given in the fifth chapter of his work entitled “Travels to the land of Brazil,” published in 1557 in Germany.
In the sixteenth century, accounts indicate that the Potiguara were considered a dominant presence along the coast that extended from Pernambuco to Maranhão. Initially the founder of Pernambuco, Duarte Coelho, managed to establish good relations with them. However, those relations began to deteriorate by the middle of the sixteenth century.
In accounts of the sixteenth century, the Potiguara were considered dominant along the coast that went from Pernambuco to Maranhão. Duarte Coelho, the founder of Pernambuco, established good relations with them, yet these deteriorated by the middle of the sixteenth century (Hulsman, 2006, p. 42).
In another work from 1627, it was registered by the Jesuit author, Friar Vicente do Salvador, that the Potiguara inhabited between Pernambuco up to the banks of the Amazon River, demonstrating that the Potiguara domain was vast. “[...] and those of Pernambuco until the Amazon River [were] Potiguaras” (Salvador, 2010, p. 96).
With these affirmations, it is clear the territorial extension of the Potiguara people in the Brazilian northeast. According to Dr. Lígio José de Oliveira Maia, in his doctoral thesis in history at the Federal University Fluminense, the territories inhabited by those Indigenous [Potiguara] people belonged, a priori, to the Indigenous Caetés people, who had been expelled from there.
Beyond the ‘evil’ that the captaincies of Pernambuco and Itamaracá enacted, the Potiguara did not forgive those who shipwrecked on the coast from Paraíba to Maranhão. That area had been taken from the Caetés, their historical opponents, a conflict that continued in the sertão backlands, where they live in refuge (Maia, 2010, p. 55).
Even though it is believed that the Caeté and the Potiguara are a single nation that for some reason came to divide itself at some moment before European arrival into their respective territories, it is a fact that the Potiguara were the ones who controlled that area for many long periods; and that by force of violence, massacre, and near-extermination, they ended up in retreat and restricted to an insignificant strip of land relative to that which they had previously commanded, which ultimately continues to be subject to the loss of their rights.
Besides the Potiguara, other Indigenous Peoples inhabited the territory distant from Paraíba — in the majority, they were the enemies of the Potiguara, that always were in conflict: the Cariri, the Tarairiu, and the Tabaja, as Chico Pereira (2014) explains.
Three nations dominated the territory of current Paraíba: the Tupi, the Cariri, and the Tapuia, also denominated as Tarairiu. The Tupi were constituted by the Tabajaras and Potiguaras, occupying a stretch of approximately 20 leagues from the coastline.
When it came to the first settlers of this land called Brazil, the historian and intellectual J. F. de Almeida Prado in his 1939 work traces a brief description of the peoples that already inhabited [the land] in the bygone moments of invasion of the Paraiban territory, giving an idea of where, more or less, their communities were located.
These Indigenous people, also called Potiguaras, or Shrimp-Eaters, lived beyond Paraíba, more above the Caités, to the south of the Tapuias of Ceará (Cariris) and to the east of the Tabajaras of the sertão backlands (1939, p. 144).
Through these accounts reproduced here, it is possible to have an idea of how the territory belonging to the Potiguara people was in the period of the European invasions. They inhabited a long stretch of land running from Pernambuco to the edges of the Amazon River, possibly in the state of Pará.
However, today, they have been reduced to a small territorial area, insignificant when compared to the mighty domain that they possessed in the beginnings of the sixteenth century; it is, however, the only People of the Tupi who have remained in the same place, up until now, resisting one of the largest massacres ever undertaken in the history of the invasion of South America.
From the Rio Grande of the Tapuyas until the Jagoaribi River is thirty-seven leagues. It is a river with a powerful main course: it is [located] at two degrees and three-quarters. Every district of this [land], until the river called Paraíba, is populated by another nation of people, called Potigoar, much more frightening than those Tapuyas, and less cautious (Vasconcellos, 1865, p. 56).
This citation presents information about the geography and the Indigenous population of the region between the Rio Grande, in which the Tapuias resided, and the Jaguaribe River. According to the account, that area extended for thirty-seven leagues, being characterized by a river with a great volume of water. The region was inhabited by the Potiguara nation, described as being more frightening than the Tapuias and less cautious.
The mention of the Potiguara nation reveals the presence of different Indigenous groups in the region. That description suggests that the Potiguara were a notable community, with cultural characteristics and distinct behaviors in comparison to the Tapuias. The reference to their more frightening and less cautious nature can indicate differences in practices and in the way of life between Indigenous groups of the region.
The account also emphasizes the presence of a significant river, one that plays an important role in the geography and in the life of the local communities. The mention of the geographical degrees indicates an attempt to provide precise information about the location and the extension of the mentioned region. These details contribute to the comprehension of the geography and of the Indigenous populations that inhabited the area during the period in question.
