ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a critical history of armed confrontations between the Ka´apor Indians and Luso-Brazilians during the period ca. 1825-1928. Using a dialectical perspective which "is critical and skeptical of received truth and established fact" it suggest that Ka´apor Indian warfare reflects no aboriginal pattern of conflicts and competition, but was, rather, a consequence of neo-European colonization and political domination of lower Amazonia. The Portuguese soldiers quickly expelled the few French, English, and Dutch colonists whom they encountered trading with the Indians of the lower Amazon. Their next objective was to pacify the Indians, who tended to be hostile to all Portuguese. This was accomplished in three ways: through force of arms, by missionization, and by the incidental spread of epidemic disease. Ka´apor warfare with other indigenous societies and escaped Afro-Brazilian slaves reflects the rise of Luso-Brazilian domination of lower Amazonia.
