Backlands (18 page)

It would take us too long to chart the development of their character. They inherited the adventurous spirit of the settler and the impulsivity of the Indian. They were set apart by their environment, which isolated them and helped them to preserve the traits and habits of their ancestors, changed in but a slight degree by the demands of their new life. And there they are, with their traditional dress, their ancient customs, and their strange loyalty to the most ancient traditions. Their religious beliefs are taken to the point of fanaticism, and their sense of honor is extreme. Their folklore resounds with the beautiful poetry of three centuries.

The cowboy comes from a strong and ancient race that arose from elements converging from distant points, and yet he is different from all the others in this country. The characteristics of this race are well defined, and he stands strong even in the greatest crises, when the leather clothing of the cowboy becomes the
jagunço
’s flexible armor. It is a stock that demonstrates the significance of the interaction of humans with their environment. They spread out through the backlands of near and bordering states, such as Goiás, Piauí, Maranhão, Ceará, and Pernambuco, and they developed a completely original character expressed even in their dwellings. All the settlements, villages, and towns that today are the life of the territory come from the same distinctive source and are quite different from those farther to the north and to the south. The southern cowboy settlements were erected near the mines or on the fringe of the brushlands. In the extreme north, following a long line between Itiúba and Ibiapaba, they were built on the site of old missions. In the area of the backlands that we are considering, they grew up from the cattle ranches.

There are too many examples to cite here. If one looks at the settlements along the São Francisco River from its source to its mouth, the differences between the three types of environments we have described are clearly visible. The Alpine regions with villages clinging precariously on the mountainsides are a monument to the bravery of the
bandeiras
. One then crosses the great plains, lands dominated by the cowboys, a rough, strong, and freedom-seeking people. Finally, the visitor will arrive at the bleak area wasted by drought and given to the slow, circuitous labors of the missionaries. To finish these quick comparisons it only remains for us to describe the Jesuit missions in this territory.

It is a fact that the backlands settlements as we know them today have completely unique origins from those of other regions. They arose from the old Indian villages that were torn from the power of the Jesuits in 1758 by the harsh policies of Minister Pombal. If we focus only on those towns that still remain today, close to the mud walls of the
jagunço
Troy, the site of Canudos, we can find, even in this small area, the best examples of this type of settlement.

In fact, this entire region, which abusive land concessions had placed in the hands of a single family, the Garcia d’Ávilas (Casa da Torre), has very old settlements. From Itapicurú de Cima to Jeremoabo, and from there along the course of the São Francisco to the backlands of Rodelas and Carobô, the missions advanced in a slow march from the seventeenth century to our own time.

No one documented their history. The extraordinary Jesuit undertaking is only recounted in a few rare documents, which are too small in number to allow us to form a complete picture of those times. The narratives that do exist, however, are eloquent testimonies of a unique past. They tell us in an unequivocal manner that while the Negro spent his days in the bustle of the coastal towns, the native Indian was settling in villages that would become cities. The Jesuits’ calculating nature and the rare self-sacrificial discipline of the Capuchins and Franciscans were responsible for the incorporation of the tribes into our national life. When at the dawn of the eighteenth century the Paulistas burst onto the scene at Pambú and Jacobina, they were surprised to see the parishes that were already being built up from Indian villages. Pambú, a little more than seventy kilometers up from Paulo Afonso, had been under colonial rule by Lisbon since 1682. It was run by a Capuchin monk who settled all tribal disputes and ruled with humility over the peaceful Morubichabas. Jacobina was an exclusively indigenous settlement and dated back to Sahy’s very old mission.

Jeremoabo was already a township in 1698, which indicates that it had a much more distant beginning. The indigenous element mixed lightly with the African, the runaway Indian with the runaway slave. Much livelier than it is today, the humble village attracted the attention of João de Lancastro, the governor general of Brazil, especially when Indian chiefs entered into heated disputes over the perfectly legal patents from the captaincies they held. In 1702 the first Franciscan missions took it upon themselves to discipline these settlements, and the monks’ ways were much more effective than the governor’s threats. When the conflicts between the tribes were settled, the number of captured Indians brought in by the church was so great that 3,700 new converts were baptized by the vicar of Itapicurú in just one day.

Nearby, the very old mission of Maçacará was founded, where in 1867 the opulent Garcia d’Ávila kept a company of his regiment. Others sprang up farther to the south: Natuba, also a very old Jesuit settlement; Inhambupe, which became the cause of a prolonged controversy between the priests and the rich distributor of lands mentioned previously when it achieved the status of parish. Itapicurú was founded by the Franciscans in 1639.

The most intense efforts to populate the country occurred, however, in the North, from the beginning of the eighteenth century. This work was carried on by the same racial elements, with the support of the crown. In the second half of the seventeenth century, the Rodelas backlands saw the arrival of the first waves of the
bandeirantes
from the South. Domingos Sertão created a dynamic center of backlands life at his Sobrado ranch. The deeds of this tough pioneer and their impact on the region have not been given the recognition they deserve. His fiefdom of fifty cattle ranches was well situated at the crossroads of the northern captaincies, almost equidistant from Piauí, Ceará, Pernambuco, and Bahia. This backlands landlord corralled the feisty and adventurous
curibocas
into working his ranches. He, like other pioneers who had mastered the land, exercised a crude kind of feudalism that led him to force his tenants into the role of vassals and the meek Tapuia Indians into serfs. Once Domingos Sertão had achieved his goal of wealth and power in the region, he became the ally of his persistent and humble adversary, the priest, in continuing the effort to integrate the population. In fact, the northern metropolis gave unflinching support to the clergy. For a long time the operating principle was to fight the Indian with the Indian, and each mission village was a bastion against the marauding and unvanquished savage.

At the close of the seventeenth century Lancastro, with his converted natives, founded the settlement of Barra to ease the ravages of the Acaroazes and Mocoazes. From that point forward, one after another missionary village was erected, following the current of the São Francisco River: Our Lady of Pilar, Sorobabé, Pambú, Aracapá, Pontal, Pajehú, etc. It is evident, then, that in this section of the Bahian backlands along the border of the Canudos region, the area most closely tied to the other northern states, the native peoples played a strong role in our early colonization history. The native intermingled with the white man and the Negro, who never became numerous enough to erase the dominant traits of the Indian.

The settlements established after the expulsion of the Jesuits were patterned after their predecessors. From the end of the eighteenth century to our day, persevering missionaries followed the illustrious example of Apolônio de Todi and continued his difficult apostolic work in Pombal, Cumbe, Bom Conselho, Monte Santo, and other such places. Isolated in the deep recesses of the backlands, this population has remained there until the present day and has continued to reproduce without the influence of outside elements. These people have been insulated and for this reason they have continued to assimilate in a uniform and intense manner that accounts for the appearance of a well-defined and complete mestizo type. On the seaboard, a thousand interfering factors such as new immigration and wars complicated miscegenation. At other central points in the wide trail of the
bandeiras
different impediments arose. In the deep backlands, however, the indigenous people, in partnership with a few white fugitives from the law or simple adventurers, were able to remain dominant.

We should not argue with history. Very powerful factors, which we shall identify, determined the isolation and preservation of the native peoples. First there were the great land grants, which placed the most enduring brand on our greedy feudalism. The owners of the soil, a classic example being the heirs of Antônio Guedes de Brito, were covetous of their wide-flung latifundia. With no boundaries to limit them, the landowners created fiefdoms of their territories, and they barely tolerated the intervention of the metropolis itself. Building chapels or establishing parishes on their lands was always marked by conflict with the priests. Even though the clergy won out in the end, they were still dominated by these backland bosses, who made the entry of new settlers or competitors difficult by establishing their far-flung ranches as powerful centers of attraction for the mestizo race that lived in the newly formed parishes.

As a consequence, that race developed outside the sphere of influence of other elements. Given to the herdsman’s life, to which they were well suited by nature, the wheat-skinned
curibocas
or
cafuzos
, direct ancestors of the present-day cowboys, followed their own evolutionary path. Entirely isolated from the population of the South and from the intensive colonial activity on the coast, they became like citizens of another country, with their own unique physical features. The royal charter of February 7, 1701, was, then, a measure designed to enforce that isolation. It forbade any communications between that part of the backlands with the South and the mines of São Paulo, with severe penalties for infractions. Not even commercial relations were tolerated. Even the simplest exchange of goods was prohibited.

There is another factor to be considered in understanding the origin of the backlander of the extreme north. That is the physical environment of the backlands, which comprises all of the vast territory that stretches from the riverbed of the Vaza-Barris to the Parnaíba in the west. We have seen some of the unusual characteristics of this region: the aggressive flora, the merciless climate, the periodic droughts, the barren soil of the bare mountain ranges that stand isolated amidst the beauty of the high plains of the interior, the majestic
araxá
of the central plateau, which we know by its name is a place where one can catch a glimpse of the rising sun from a distance.
¹³
Great forests fringe the undulating outline of the slopes. This unforgiving region was given a suggestive name by the Tupi,
pora-pora-eyma
, a name that is still attached to one of the mountain ridges in the east, the Borborema.
¹⁴
This was the refuge of the Tapuia. Beaten back by the superior numbers of the Portuguese, the Negro, and the Tupi, the brave Carirís found refuge in that hard neck of land. It was a landscape torn by storms, hardened into a rigid skeleton of rocks, dried out by the sun, and crumbled into a rash of thorny brush. It was in the vacuum of this wasteland, where there was no sign of the coveted mines, that the
bandeiras
finally exhausted themselves.

However, the mysterious region of the Tapuia, the
tapuíretama
, appealed to missionary stoicism. Its long, twisting trails traced the torturously slow and painful march of these church apostles. The
bandeiras
who did reach this area quickly retreated and fled to other places. The
tapuí-retama
was appropriate for the great silent battle of the faith, but it depressed and overwhelmed the adventurers. They abandoned it and nothing could convince them to return. They left this heathen land in peace.

A fortunate result of the isolation of the place was the preservation of Tapuia geographical terms for the region. The language was resistant to absorption by Portuguese and Tupi, which were dominant in other places. Without digressing too long, we shall illustrate this linguistic anomaly, which translates a unique history, by describing the lands around Canudos. I quote from Teodoro Sampaio’s work on the Tupi language:

The great backlands populations as well as those that developed in the middle basin of the São Francisco River naturally evolved with a dominant portion of Tapuia blood. They remained exiled in that place, evolving in a closed circle for three centuries, till our present day, completely abandoned and alien to our national destiny. They kept the traditions of the past intact. Whoever should visit the region today will observe a notable uniformity among the populace. Their appearance and stature vary only slightly, giving the impression of an invariable anthropological type, which is immediately distinguishable from the mestizo of the coast. The coastal mestizo has all varieties of skin colors and has an ill-defined type, depending on the variables of his ancestry. The man of the backlands, however, seems to come from a common mold and has almost identical physical traits. His complexion ranges from the bronzed
mameluco
to the wheat tones of the
cafuzo.
The hair can be straight and sleek or slightly waved. He has the same athletic build, the same moral fiber, the same superstitions, vices, and virtues. The uniformity of the backlander of the North is impressive. He undoubtedly represents a fully developed ethnic subcategory.