Abstract
Indigenous allies have received considerable scholarly attention over the last decade or so with the development of “New Conquest” historiography. However, these studies remain overwhelmingly focused on Mesoamerica and to some degree Peru with their large sedentary populations. The overarching goal of this article is to expand upon “New Conquest” historiography through an examination of semisedentary Indigenous participation in the conquest of an understudied area during an understudied period—the Brazilian region of Maranhão during the first two decades of the seventeenth century. While it is difficult to recover individual Native perspectives for Brazil during the period in the archives, this article’s employment of an ethnohistorical lens provides a better understanding of Native motivations and actions while confirming the fact that the conquest of Maranhão, and Brazil in general, largely depended upon Indigenous allies.
