“A decree for the purpose was issued so late as the year 1808, by Don John, and it was one of the measures which he thought best to reclaim the aborigines, who had just before committed some ravages. He directed that the Indians who were conquered, should be distributed among the agriculturalists, who should support, clothe, civilize, and instruct them in the principles of our holy religion, but should be allowed to use the services of the same Indians for a certain number of years, in compensation for the expense of their instruction and management. “This unfortunate permission at once destroyed all intercourse between the natives and the Brazilians. The Indians were everywhere hunted down for the sake of their salvation; wars were excited among the tribes, for the laudable purpose of bringing in each other captives, to be converted to Christianity; and the most sacred objects were prostituted to the base cupidity of man, by even this humane and limited permission of reducing his fellow-creatures to slavery. “In the distant provinces, particularly on the banks of the Maranhão, it is still practised, and white men set out for the woods, to seek their fortunes; that is, to hunt Indians and return with slaves. The consequence was, that all who could escape, retired to the remotest forests; and there is not one to be now found in a state of nature, in all the wooded region. “It frequently happened, as we passed along, that dark wreaths of what appeared like smoke, arose from among distant trees on the sides of the mountains, and they seemed to us to be decisive marks of Indian wigwams; but we found them to be nothing more than misty exhalations, which shot up in thin, circumscribed columns, exactly resembling smoke issuing from the aperture of a chimney. “We met, however, one in the woods with a copper-colored face, high cheekbones, small dark eyes approaching each other, a vacant, stupid cast of countenance, and long, lank, black hair, hanging on his shoulders. He had on him some approximation to a Portuguese dress, and belonged to one of the aldêas formed in this region; but he had probably once wandered about these woods in a state of nature, where he was now going peaceably along on an European road. “We had passed along through Valença, one of these aldêas of the Indians of the valley of Parahiba, Christianized and taught the arts of civilized life. Another, called the Aldêa da Pedra, is situated on the river, nearer to its mouth, where the people still retain their erratic habits, though apparently conforming to our usages.