Akwê

The Xerente, who call themselves Akwê, the people, are a Central Jê people of the Brazilian interior, on the right bank of the Tocantins river. Their oral tradition tells of a coastal home and a migration through the north-eastern sertão; with the Xavante, Xakriabá and Krahô they form part of the Acuén cluster, split by warfare.

Their villages traditionally lay in a semicircle, and society was divided into exogamous moieties named after the sun, Doí, and the moon, Wahirê. Jesuit missionaries and inland bandeiras reached them in the 1600s.

After gold was found in neighbouring Goiás in the 1700s, the Portuguese crown gathered them into supervised settlements; the Capuchin mission of Teresa Cristina, founded in the 1800s, grew into Tocantínia. The Xavante broke away and migrated west to Mato Grosso, leaving the Xerente in possession of the Tocantins lands.