Expansion's frontiers and Indian peoples in Santa Catarina State

Abstract

Based on the notion of "expansion fronts" in its first part, the article identifies the main forms which such fronts showed, along the history of Southern Brazil (from sixteenth century to twentieth), and it comments on the impact of each of (or possibly the different "waves" of each one) on indigenous peoples of the region. In the second part the article details the expansion fronts specifically in the State of Santa Catarina, and also analyses its contact and impact on indigenous peoples. Finally, it gives an overview of indigenous reactions to the expansion fronts, in different historical periods, between the eighteenth and twenty-first century.