“Against prudence and providence”: Parents Jacob and João de Barros and colonization in the “backwoods” of jacobinas

Abstract

In the second half of the seventeenth century, after the Portuguese Restoration, the settlement of the sertão of Portuguese America intensified. The process, defined in the documentation as "expansion for the inland routes", aimed at the constitution of villages and the formation of alliances, with the purpose of guaranteeing security in the commercial access to the routes of the cattle ranchers that followed from Bahia to Piauí, as well as As the constitution of a group of Indians that would restrain the formation of quilombos in the impenetrable routes of the sertão. Again, the religious orders were entrusted with the task of organizing the villages, disciplining the souls, and providing manpower at the entrances to the hinterland. The context of creation of the villages is presented based on the documentation of the Ultramarino Archive and that found in the collection Historical Records of the National Library of Rio de Janeiro. This work has as objective the multiple actors involved in the settlement of the sertão of Bahia, with emphasis on the Jesuits, who became the mediators between the worlds of the Indians and the interests of the curraleiros, responsible for a series of difficulties for the work of catechesis.