From tribes to indigenous villages

the role of the Overseas Council in Bahia and the agents of indigenous literacy

Abstract

This paper discusses the performance of the special trial court of the Overseas Council established in Bahia, in 1758, having as one of its objectives to execute the charter of May 8, 1758 and, consequently, the new indigenist policy of the government of King José I. Particular attention is given to the deliberations that had an impact on the process of indigenous schooling and literacy, insofar as they point out to a greater understanding of the linguistic social history of Bahia inthe second half of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century. The discussion is based on documentary sources from the Overseas Historical Archive (AHU) and the Public Archive of the State of Bahia (APEB). In the field of Social History of Written Culture, a particular form of cultural history, the analysis of the deliberations and proceedings of the special trial court of the Overseas Council brings to light the impacts on the linguistic reconfiguration of the Captaincy of Bahia towards the expansion of the Portuguese language in the indigenous villages erected in this political-administrative space, reconfigured in the second half of the 18th century, even though the documentation also witnesses the persistence of the use of indigenous languages. The dynamics of these villages, characterized as multilingual, still demonstrate that the supposed hegemony of the Portuguese language implied tensions and conflicts common to contexts of linguistic contacts in asymmetric situations. Therefore, the performance of the aforementioned special trial court, including its translation of the Directory of Indigenous Peoples and its application to the State of Brazil, leads to a discussion on the language policy implemented by the Josephine government in the Indigenous villages of eighteenth-century Bahia.