The history of contacts with the Palikur since the XVIth Century includes a variety of actors – European merchants and travellers, French and Portuguese administrative employees, French Jesuits, Portuguese military troops, fugitive Black slaves from the Guianas, Brazilian customs-officers, Catholic and evangelical missionaries, among others –, with whom the nature of their relations has varied: commercial, religious, political, or all of these at the same time.

In the first historical records (at the beginning of the XVIth Century), the Palikur were located on the southern coast of the then captaincy of Cabo do Norte (present state of Amapá), a bit above the mouth of the Amazon River. In the mid-XVIIth Century, they were forced to migrate to the north of the captaincy, going inland, settling between the coast and the region of flooded fields of the Uaçá River basin. Persecutions by the Portuguese, who feared the commercial relations between the Indians and other Europeans who frequented the region (French, English, and Dutch), intensified during this period, resulting in the extermination of various Arawak-speaking groups, such as the Aruã, considered allies of the French and thus, enemies of the Portuguese.

In the context of the dispute over passage to the mouth of the Amazon River and contiguous territories, commerce established between the Palikur and other Europeans could not, in the eyes of Portuguese authorities, go unpunished, and hence they were treated as enemies. In 1728, the abusive treatment inflicted by the Portuguese “Coast-Guard Troops” on the Palikur served as the grounds for a complaint from the Governor of Caienne, Monsieur de Charanville, to the agent of the General Captain of the state of Grão Pará, declaring that “luso-brazilian troops have practiced violence against people who are subjects to the sovereignty of France, that is, the Palincurt", who, according to the historian Arthur Cézar F. Reis (1993:143), were considered “longtime enemies of the paraense colonists".

The hostilities of the luso-brazilians against the indigenous populations also occured in the projects of the Catholic missionaries who travelled throughout the region between the middle of the XVIIth Century and the middle of the XVIIIth(Lombard,1928). Following the strategy of attracting Indians who were more exposed to the aggressions of the Portuguese, French Jesuit missionaries attempted several times to set up missions among the Palikur. However, according to Nimuendajú (1926:10), there are only records of a single mission that was founded in 1738 by Father Fourré and which did not last very long.

With the administrative definition of the contested Franco-Brazilian territory settled in 1900, establishing the line of the lowest part of the Oiapoque River valley as the natural boundary between the two countries, the relations between the Palikur and French took on a new connotation although the fear of Brazilian authorities persisted, as French sovereignty over the Palikur became more vulnerable.

This fear was borne out by the lack of diplomacy and abuses committed by the Brazilian customs employees, who yelled at the Indians because they didn’t speak Portuguese and accused them of being smugglers" (Nimuendajú, 1926:12). This treatment provoked the migration of almost the entire Palikur population to the French side in 1900. With the justification of protecting the Indians, the colonial government of Caienne invited the Palikur to move to the left bank of the Oiapoque river, setting aside for them the region of the Crique Marouan as exclusive territory. But, due to flu, measles, and malaria epidemics, many families returned to the Urukauá a few years later (C.Nimuendajú, 1926:12;E.Arnaud, 1969:05).

During the XXth Century, the relations between the indigenous populations of the region and the Whites were marked principally by Brazilian administrative policies. The visit of the Border Inspection Commission, led by General Rondon em 1927, concluded that it was necessary to put an SPI (Indian Protection Service) post in the region and schools in the villages. Since this is a border region with few inhabitants, it was proposed that the indigenous populations who lived there should serve as “living boundaries”; nevertheless, in order for this to become possible, it would be necessary to “instil in them the Brazilian civic spirit".

In 1930, The first SPI post was founded, located on a strategic geographical point called Encruzo because it is located at the crossing of the Curipi and Uaçá rivers, a place that allows access and mandatory passage for those who come from the Oiapoque or from the Karipuna villages of the Curipi on their way to the villages of the Galibi-Marworno and Palikur. Four years later, two teachers were sent to the villages of Espírito Santo on the Curipi River and Santa Maria dos Galibis (presently, Kumarumã) on the Uaçá River (A.Tassinari,1998:86). At that time, the Palikur were the only ones to refuse to put a school in their villages, as they associated this with slavery. They only allowed a school to be built after their conversion to evangelical Pentecostalism, almost forty years after.

Then began the task of turning the Indians into Brazilian citizens. The active presence of these agencies (the school and the SPI), which in practice functioned through the individual action of the people who headed them, was governed by the positivist ideology of “order and progress". The SPI promoted certain caciques [chiefs] as leaders; interfered in economic production, principally through the introduction of other species of cultivated plants; and, together with the regimen established by the teachers, put into effect various forms of punishment, which included work for the “community”, or physical abuses, which were applied to those who deviated from the norms instituted by the protection service itself.

Nevertheless, depite the common directives in relation to the indigenous populations, the action of the SPI varied in relation to each of the societies of the region. While their intervention in the lives of the Karipuna and Galibi-Marworno was more direct, including the installation of a post in the village of Kumarumã among the Palikur, control was exercised more sporadically – but always with the same severity, a fact which is still present in the memories of the elders. In their constant journeys to the Oiapoque and French Guiana, the Palikur were obliged to pass through Encruzo, where they were submitted to searches, mainly for alcoholic beverages which were strictly forbidden.

In 1968, the SPI was substituted by the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI). In contrast with its predecessor, FUNAI adopted an indigenist policy, and, together with the Indigenist Missionary Council (CIMI), played an important role in the process of demarcation of indigenous lands and their maintenance.

At the end of the 70s, FUNAI, headed by Frederico Oliveira, and CIMI, coordinated by the Italian priest Nello Rufaldi, joined with the indigenous populations of the region to demand that state highway BR-156, which would connect the capitol of the state, Macapá, to the city of Oiapoque, not cut through the Indigenous Lands which had already been demarcated; principally because the tracing of the highway would separate the headwaters of the rivers from the rest of the indigenous area. Yet, the will of the government of the Federal Territory of Amapá at that time, the governor of which had been appointed during the height of the military dictatorship, prevailed. The attempts to block the passage of the road did not succeed, and both institutions suffered the consequences of failure. FUNAI had its employee Cezar Oda removed and transferred from the Territory under false accusations, and CIMI nearly paid dearly with the extradition of Father Nello Ruffaldi.

These institutions helped organize the Indians of the region politically, stimulating annual political assemblies and supporting the decision of the Indians to participate more directly in local politics, through the election of Indian councilmen. The results of this first effort at political organization would come to be felt in the 1990s, when the Association of the Indigenous Peoples of the Oiapoque (APIO) was created and, in 1996, João Neves, a Galibi-Marworno Indian, was elected mayor of Oiapoque.

Some time before the political movement stimulated by FUNAI and CIMI began, the Palikur had experience with another kind of contact, religious. In 1965, a couple of missionary linguists of the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL), Harold and Diana Green, came to settle in the village of Kumenê on the Urukauá and began learning the Palikur language. They stayed in Urukauá for approximately 11 years. During this time, besides studying the language, the missionaries encouraged the entrance of the school in the village and helped out whenever there were health problems.

Two years after the arrival of the Greens, the Palikur received the first visits of a missionary pastor of the New Tribes Mission. The action of this pastor is considered by the Palikur to be a decisive step in their evangelization. It was his religious preachings that exhorted the Palikur to "accept Jesus, by being baptized in the waters". After this moment, pastors of the Assembly of God Evangelical Church of Macapá, capitol of the state, initiated the installation of a headquarters of the church in the village of Kumenê, which was consolidated by the consagration of an indigenous pastor who became responsible for its direction.