Guajajara

The Guajajara, part of the Tenetehara-speaking world of Maranhão, lived in the forested country of the Pindaré River. Their earliest encounter with Europeans may have been a French reconnaissance expedition in 1615, though the date remains uncertain. Portuguese slave-raiding parties subsequently made the middle Pindaré dangerous for its Indigenous inhabitants.

From the mid-seventeenth century Jesuit missions offered some protection against enslavement, while imposing new forms of dependency and compulsory service. After the Crown expelled the Jesuits, the Tenetehara recovered a measure of independence by limiting contact with colonists. Withdrawal from outside society became one means of preserving autonomy.