This article analyses the organization of Indian free labour in the Portuguese Amazon region, during the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth century. It argues that, besides the tight control that the religious orders exerted over the Indian free population established in the aldeias, not only the Crown advanced alternatives to the use of free Indian labour, but also the Portuguese settlers took advantage of these legal options to gain access to Indian workers, especially when they experienced shortage of labourers. It also asserts that Indian agency was crucial to understand how a policy and legislation towards the Indian nations were implemented in the region.
Amazon region; Indian workers; seventeenth and eighteenth centuries