Gameleira

Gameleira lies in the upper Tocantins country of interior Brazil. Rivers offered routes through woodland and savanna, but rapids and seasonal floods made passage difficult. Indigenous communities used the waterways, cultivated suitable ground and kept relations across the uplands long before colonial prospectors entered the region.

In the eighteenth century gold mining drew colonists and enslaved labourers into Goiás. Colonial authorities founded settlements called aldeamentos to bring Indigenous peoples under their control. Some Akwẽ groups, including the Xerente and Xavante, lived in such settlements for a time before resisting and moving away.