Pankararu

The Pankararu are an Indigenous people of the Pernambuco sertão, whose villages cluster around Brejo dos Padres near Tacaratu and Petrolândia. They were formed through the forced removals and mission aldeamentos of the Portuguese colony, which settled different ethnic groups together and blurred older identities. Their tradition remembers a grant of one square league of land to the mission that gathered their ancestors during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The district of Tacaratu, its name meaning mountain of many peaks in their language, was formally created in 1808. Their original tongue is known only from short word lists and was never securely classified; the people came to speak Portuguese.

The Toré dance and the cult of the Encantados, enchanted beings said to dwell in castles hidden inside the hills, remained central to their ritual life.