A galha da figueira branca e o carvalho: alvorecer do Maranhão colonial a partir das representações a respeito dos chefes tupinambá (1603-1619)

Abstract

This present study, result of an interdisciplinary debate with researchers in the field of Archeology, Anthropology, Sociology, Political Philosophy and History, analyzes the relations established between Tupinambas and Europeans at the beginning of the period known as the history of colonial Maranhão. To do so, we take as a starting point the way Conquest agents represented the Tupinamba chiefs. The first objective was to characterize the chiefs from evidence found in reports, chronicles and separate documents from the early years of the seventeenth century. The second was to perceive and demonstrate the practices and the social imaginary that served to maintain and reproduce the condition of the chief. The third was to highlight the contradictions engendered in those same practices and imaginary after the establishment of contact between Tupinambas and Europeans. Starting from our conception of intermediate space, we sought to show that representations of the Tupinambá imaginary, despite the shock of the contact between two societies that were formed apart, may have remained synthesized in the ruptures from the connection of elements similar to the Christian imaginary that constituted.