ABSTRACT
The Spirit White Feather (Pena Branca) belongs to a category of spiritual entities called caboclos that are part of the pantheon of spiritual entities in some Afro-Brazilian religions. The term caboclo refers to a spirit that is thought to belong to the indigenous past of Brazil, although they are sometimes regarded as mixed in terms of race (mestizo) and heritage. I use the word ‘past’ here to emphasize that the concept of caboclos within religious discourse does not refer to the contemporary Amazonian population, despite the fact that the term caboclo is also used in a non-religious context to refer to contemporary populations in the Amazon. With these variations in mind, Xavier Vatin offers three definitions of caboclos: mestizo (people of White-Indigenous mixed race origin), Amerindian population of Brazil, and indigenous spirits that are regarded in Candomblé as dono da terra, the masters of the earth. 1 The term caboclo was (and is) highly contested because it has often signified a pejorative attitude towards the Amazonian people. With reference to Brazilian encyclopaedias and dictionaries, Stephen Nugent, referring to various Brazilian sources, explains that the Amazonian caboclo is portrayed in these publications as ‘deeply flawed: a coppery mongrel, backwoodsman, half-bred, cunning, traitorous, despicable and unreliable, a person of dubious origins bred from Amerindians and Africans, a tame Amerindian’. 2 However, this pejorative connotation of caboclo is being increasingly challenged, and the term is even used in the opposite way to designate ‘true or legitimate Indians’, instead of a ‘tame Amerindian’. 3 Nonetheless, the unquestionably ‘unpleasant’ uses of the term caboclo make it impossible to use it ‘without bearing the weight of possible misunderstanding’. 4 Therefore, it is important to clarify which of the many senses of caboclo is being used, especially when one transfers the term from its Amazonian context into the area of Afro-Brazilian religions. To say, for instance, that the Amerindian population of Brazil is ‘worshipped’ as caboclos in Afro-Brazilian religions 5 would be misleading due to the controversial readings of the term within the wider Brazilian society. Hence, despite the connotation of caboclos within Afro-Brazilian religions as ‘native dwellers of the interior’, 6 it is important to determine the concept of caboclo within a religious context, apart from the Amazonian people.
