Rethinking the Conquest of Goias, 1775-1819

To the sound of trumpets and drums, the people gathered before the church of Our Lady of the Rosary in the square of the small town of Santa Cruz in southern Goiás. They were there for the "jogo dos cavaleiros" (the game of the cavalrymen). First of all, the troops processed from the commandant's house to the square, which was lined in the form of a cross. Enveloped in long mantles, the women of the commandant's family headed a second procession, including soldiers, musicians, and the Austrian visitor, Johann Emanuel Pohl, who accompanied the commander and the judge. The townspeople followed at the end. Receiving them in formation in the "spacious" square were the mounted cavalrymen dressed in Portuguese uniforms. With their swords, they saluted Pohl and the other men of high rank, who took their seats on the top of a stepped platform shaded by a thatched roof, while the soldiers sat below.

Then Pohl observed masked figures appear that made people laugh, especially a thin man impersonating a French master of the dance, who played a rabeca (type of violin) with a hallowed out gourd and a white cloth. The masked figures were followed by elegantly dressed Moors, who entered the square, saluting the spectators with their swords, and by the Portuguese cavalrymen. An ambassador then stepped forth to offer peace to the Moors if they would convert to Christianity; but they refused to do so, and the Christians and Moors began to fight with expert handling of lances and swords and "perfect" horsemanship. The non-Christians were defeated, and so they agreed to convert to the Catholic religion.¹ Such ritualized combats, now called cavalhadas, are still performed at Pentecost in Goiás.² As cultural historians and anthropologists have noted, such festivals visually demonstrate societal values and social structures, including a person's ranking in local society. The cavalhada observed by Pohl in 1819 clearly reflected elite values and dramatized their beliefs that they would always win against non-Christians. Furthermore, if an ambassador failed to persuade them to convert, then conquest was essential to bring about their conversion to Christianity.

In reality, however, these cavalrymen were also participating in the actual conquests of non-Christian "gentiles," in this case of the indigenous nations of Central Brazil. Those that enacted a cavalhada during Pentecost might leave shortly thereafter on a bandeira (expedition) of exploration, conquest, and enslavement. Henceforth, this essay will focus on the historical conquerors and bandeiras of the late colonial period (1775-1819) in the captaincy of Goiás (now the states of Goiás and Tocantins) that contested the indigenous nations for lands rich in gold. Although the conquest of the Muslims of Iberia had ended in 1492, the conquest of the non-Christians of the captaincy of Goiás would still be incomplete by the time the Portuguese yielded power to an independent Brazil in 1822. In the Portuguese discourse of the late colonial period, however, they had successfully conquered their non-Christian "barbarian enemies." But the questions this essay poses are these: had they actually conquered the indigenous nations by force of arms? If their alleged conquests had been so successful in the late eighteenth century, then why was the frontier still a fiercely contested ground in the 1820s? Or, stated in another way, why had the Portuguese not established their hegemony and "closed the frontier"?

In order to answer these questions, this essay will first describe Portuguese policies regarding conquest and Christianization and then re-visit three of the major conquests of the indigenous nations as they appear in standard historical narratives of the captaincy of Goiás. We also hope to clarify the role of the "ambassadors," i.e., the indigenous actors, including women, in negotiating a temporary peace on a violent frontier...