Franciscan and "Savages": Constructing image of "Indian" in História do Brasil of Vicente do Salvador

Vicente do Salvador's well-known chronicle História do Brasil has often been studied as a source for Portuguese struggle to maintain the possession of Brazil in the 16th and early 17th century. This thesis, however, uses the chronicle to describe and analyze means of construction of the "Indians", indigenous stereotypes and therefore particular Portuguese identity as understood by a Franciscan author. In its core lies question of the designed and imagined contrasts between the white, Portuguese religious friar and a dark-skinned, pagan and barbarous heathen as formulated in the terms of a concrete 17th century perspective but provided with comparative context. Understood in the terms of historical anthropology research, História do Brasil needs to be recognized as a principal Franciscan source that could potentially counter overall dependence on the Jesuit literature to study colonial Brazil. Keywords Brazil. Colonialism. Franciscans. Identity. Otherness