ABSTRACT
The article analyzes a denunciation of two Indians from cariri people to the Lisbon Inquisition. The documentation, filed in the Prosecutor’s Notebooks of the Tribunal do Santo Ofício, indicates the existence of an investigation conducted by the Inquisition on pacts with the devil carried out by women who belonged to different ethnic and social groups of the Miranda Mission, located at the time in the parish of Nossa Senhora da Expectação of Vila do Icó, bishopric of Pernambuco. The accusers claimed to have participated, in the company of a slave, in libidinous encounters with demons. All the women were said to have been enticed by the wife of the owner of the farm where they worked. The documentation allows to know aspects still ignored of the colonial dynamics of the region, of which we can highlight important contacts and conflicts between the different social groups - colonists, indigenous, enslaved, and manumitted slaves - who lived in the Cariris Novos in the middle of the 18th century. In addition, it indicates the particularities of conducting an inquisitorial investigation in the Brazilian backland.
Keywords:
Lisbon Inquisition; Ceará; Cariris Novos, backland; pact with the devil