The indigenous peoples of what is now Brazil cannot be said to be neglected as a subject of scholarly research, but equally they do not figure in the first line in either Brazil or North America. Investigations of racial relations tend to focus on the African-Portuguese mix with scant regard to the fact that in the colonial and imperial periods Brazil was a tri-racial society. Works that focus on the indigenous peoples are accordingly to be welcomed. Kaori Kodama’s study promises an analysis of the attitudes toward the índios among the dominant society in the mid-nineteenth century, particularly the views expressed in the publications of the Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro, the cultural heart of the empire.
In her introduction the author proposes a three-part structure to her study. The first section looks at the ways in which the dominant society reordered the existing and diverse images (in the broadest...
