[The strength of the shaman in Brazilian colonial medicine of the XVI and XVIII centuries].
The strategy of the colonial conquest of Brazil by the Portuguese, between the XVI and XVIII centuries was linked to the complex set of political, economic and military forces from the Metropolis and the Church. In the first contacts with the Indian populations, on the coast, the colonizing elements, chiefly, the religious ones, perceived the extraordinary importance of the Indian shaman in the organizational structure of the autochthonous populations. Thus, the physical and moral destruction of the Indian shaman and his substitution by healing doctors and priests had become a fundamental part of the plans designed by the Metropolis and the Church in consolidating the territorial conquest.
Botelho
João Bosco
JB
D001938:Brazil; D002835:Christianity / Q000266:history*; D018595:Colonialism / Q000266:history*; D049670:History, 17th Century; D049671:History, 18th Century; D008519:Medicine, Traditional / Q000266:history*; D011174:Portugal; D019423:Shamanism / Q000266:history*