Catagua

The Cataguá, also called Cataguases, were a non-Tupi people of the Brazilian interior and the most numerous indigenous group in later Minas Gerais; their grip on the central and southern grasslands was such that bandeirantes called it the Campos Gerais dos Cataguases, the Country of the Cataguá.

Moving north from southern Brazil, they defeated the Tupi-speaking Carijó and occupied much of their territory, winning fame as warriors, and Portuguese settlers accused them, perhaps unjustly, of devouring war captives.

When the Portuguese crown turned against them around 1670, paulista bandeirantes marched in to enslave or exterminate: Fernão Dias Paes Leme led some six hundred men, and Lourenço Castanho Taques is credited with breaking their power in a campaign remembered as genocide. Surviving bands were absorbed or displaced by the gold rush filling Minas Gerais with miners, and the town of Cataguases still keeps their name.