::01

The mythical origin place of the Bakairi – Sawâpa waterfall – is located below the confluence of the Verde River with the Paranatinga. Due to internal conflicts and pressures from enemy indigenous peoples, basically the Kayabí, the Bakairi migrated in three different directions. A part of them went to the headwaters of the Arinos; it was the first to be reached by the bandeira expeditions in the first decades of the 18th Century, after which they got involved in mining activities. Another went to the upper Paranatinga; they were surrounded by colonizers, cattle-raisers or agriculturalists or got involved in activities related to these, in the first decades of the 19th Century. The third group, which was the largest, went in the direction of the upper Xingu, losing contact with the other two. The first two groups of Bakairi came to be known as “tame” or “independent”. Later Karl von den Steinen would come to call them “western", differentiating them from the “eastern” group of the upper

	::02

After 1847, the Bakairi of Arinos, also said to be from Santana, along with those of the upper Paranatinga, visited with frequency the General Directorate of Indians in Cuiabá, hoping to receive presents. Later, they got involved in rubber-gathering, especially those of Santana, going to commercialize it in the capitol. The Bakairi of Santana ended up working compulsorily in rubber extraction, even on their own lands, for the rubber-bosses who occupied these lands. Prohibited from speaking their language, among other sorts of violence practiced against them, some of these Bakairi migrated to Paranatinga in the decades from 1920 to 1960. But they were forced to leave by employees of the SPI who claimed, as did the rubber-bosses, that they stole cattle. The creation of the Santana Indian Post in 1965, did not change this situation. From that time on, the S.I.L.(Summer Institute of Linguistics), established its presence there, intermittently, as did Jesuit missionaries. Years later, the Bakairi themselves forced the invaders out of Santana. Only in 1975 was a school built in this area.

The Bakairi of the Paranatinga were guides, canoe makers and interpreters in the expeditions of von den Steinen – undertaken in 1884 and 1887 – and in others that came after them. Through these expeditions, the relations between the Eastern and Western Bakairi, in the terminology of vem den Steinen, were re-established. Before then, the Bakairi and other peoples of the upper Xingu were unknown to the whites.

	::03

In 1920 the Indian Post was created and the Bakairi Indigenous Land was demarcated, but leaving outside its limits the group of Antoninho, the famous guide of von den Steinen. The objective was to attract all upper Xingu Indians into the area, and thus conquer lands and manual labor for colonization. But only the Bakairi definitively moved to the Paranatinga and three years later their presence in the upper Xingu was no longer recorded. Critically reduced in number, those who had been transferred re-organized into several groups on the banks of the Paranatinga, and were submitted to compulsory labor by the agents of the SPI. The other Indians of the upper Xingu visited the Post in search of “presents".

	::04

In this period of territorial losses and depopulation, missionaries of the South American Indian Mission began to work among them, and stayed until the 1960s when the Bakairi pressured them to leave. In 1922, a school was also built in the area. Twenty years later, the various local groups were brought together into one single “settlement”, by the side of the Post, since mobility and dispersion, both essential to their universe of sociability, were considered an impediment to education and health services. Those who did not submit to the imposed order were transferred to other indigenous areas, above all those of their enemies. Several Bakairi participated, compulsorily, in the “pacification” of a Xavante group, on the upper Batovi. A part of these Xavante migrated to the Bakairi Indigenous Lands, but in 1974, with a population of 180 people, which surpassed the Bakairi population, they left for the Culuene River.

	::05

The decade of the 1980s was marked by Community Development Projects financed with resources of the World Bank, which introduced in the two areas trucks and mechanized agriculture, among other things. On the Bakairi Indigenous Land, in this period, the Bakairi recovered an area of lands that had been taken away from them at the time of the second demarcation. The unequal access to the goods introduced resulted in the fragmentation of the existing “settlement” and in the constitution of the present local groups.