Bons e maus selvagens: os olhares do português Gabriel Soares de Sousa sobre os indígenas brasileiros do século XVI

Abstract

In the 16th century, as a record of the adventures of Portuguese travelers through “seas never sailed before”, the so-called travel narratives gain ground, being Gabriel Soares de Sousa's Descriptive Treaty of Brazil in 1587 one of its exponents. In the work, the Portuguese settler, who settled and was master of sugar mill in Bahia during the period of the Iberian Union, wrote to the court of Philip II of Spain (I of Portugal) about the riches, fauna, flora and indigenous populations from Bahia and the Brazilian coast. In Minas Gerais public high schools, reading and analyzing the reports of chroniclers and travelers of the 16th century are part of the Common Basic Content (CBC) of History. The guidelines point out that students need to get in touch with European myths and visions of the New World in order to identify how this meeting of differences took place and the image of the Other. That said, this paper aims to show how the 16th century Brazilian indigenous ethnic groups were described by Gabriel Soares in his Descriptive Treaty and how a learning object produced through eXeLearning software can be an efficient and attractive tool in making this theme available to adolescents in high schools. To this end, the dissertation brings information about the imagination and historical context of Soares de Sousa, which may have impacted his views on Brazilian indigenous ethnic groups. In turn, the learning object developed through eXeLearning presents excerpts from the Treaty and this dissertation, video interviews with specialists and engravings from other 16th century chroniclers' productions, as well as interactive exercises, such as multiple choice questions, which will serve as challenging elements of self-assessment for learners. This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - Brasil (CAPES) - Finance Code 001, by the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa de Minas Gerais (FAPEMIG) and by the Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia do Sul de Minas Gerais (IFSULDEMINAS).