Pitaguary

The Pitaguary, also called Potiguara, are a Tupi-origin Indigenous people of Ceará who hold the Serra da Aratanha lands; their name, a variant of Potiguara, appears in documents of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries as the name of a serra, a homestead and a territory.

In 1665, after wars against Portuguese and Dutch in Ceará, the regional Potiguara gathered into an aldeia later called Bom Jesus da Aldeia de Parangaba. Around 1680 part of them founded São Sebastião de Paupina. Royal grants gave the Parangaba Indians land in 1707 and 1718 and the Paupina Indians holdings in 1722.

Jesuit missionaries catechized the settlements and, by Pitaguary memory, the colonial church and reservoir at Santo Antônio were raised with forced indigenous labor; the people came to speak Portuguese.