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The Kapiekran, ancestors of the Canela, were indirectly contacted by military forces at the end of the XVIIth Century, but only during the last decade of the XVIIIth Century did there effectively occur any incursions on their population and way of life. Periodic attacks were made by local militia and bandeira expeditions organized to sieze the lands of the Kapiekran, which were used for agriculture and cattle raising along the Itapicuru and Alpercatas rivers, to the northeast and west of Picos. Decimated by these wars, in 1814, the Kapiekran surrendered to the Brazilian forces of the region, in Pastos Bons, in exchange for protection. Their survivors, as well as those from various other Timbira nations, were authorized to settle in the northwestern corner of the ancestral lands of the Kapiekran. At the end of the 1830s, they occupied around 5% of the old gathering areas of the Kapiekran.

Then followed about a hundred years of relative peace and limited contact with people of the interior, until, in 1938, the Indian Protection Service (SPI) sent an agent to live with his family near the Ramkokamekrá village. This relationship caused rapid cultural change. Nimuendajú's fieldwork for his great study on the Canela, The Eastern Timbira, was undertaken, fortunately, before this process began, during six visits between 1929 and 1936.

The SPI obtruded in such a way on the indigenous authorities that the age-class leadership, essential for guaranteeing annual labor in family gardens, ceased to function. This weakening of leadership contributed significantly to the loss of self-sufficiency in agricultural production, even to the present day.

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Cultural traditions also did not escape unharmed as a result of contact. In 1951, an important Ramkokamekrá chief, Hàk-too-kot, a great specialist and promoter of Canela traditions, died. At the same time, the teaching of writing began. In the 1970s, the incipient health assistance provided by Funai increased the Indians' confidence in pharmaceutical treatments, which proved to be favorable to population growth. Then, missionaries from the Wycliffe Bible Translators translated the New Testament to the Canela language and thus began preaching new values among the Ramkokamekrá.

The millenarian movement which occured among the Ramkokamekrá in 1963 also contributed to their disbelief in ancient traditions. The failure of the movement only exacerbated this disbelief, besides forcing them to be transferred temporarily to a Guajajara area near Barra do Corda, in order to escape the vengeance of the ranchers. This forced change to an adverse ecological zone exposed them to distinct types of agriculture and hunting, as well as to living together with the Guajajara, a Tupian group, and with the Brazilian urban culture.

The bridge built over the Alpercatas River in 1956 made it possible for relatively cheap commercial goods to be introduced among the Ramkokamekrá. Such merchandise was another important factor in their change of values, stimulating a greater investment in agricultural labor directed at obtaining these goods and favoring individual material wealth. In the 1990s, a project designed to help the Ramkokamekrá get through the period of hunger which preceded the harvest stimulated the clearing of large community gardens and convinced them that, by working together, they could increase their production. This, in turn, would be sold in the city in exchange for industrialized goods, their new cultural focus.

The first mention of the Apanyekrá goes back to the end of the first decade of the 19^th Century, when they are mentioned by the military officer Francisco de Paula Ribeiro. It seems that they inhabited the mountainous area to the west of the Kapiekran, located far to the north of the trails through the river valleys utilized by the Brazilian colonists (through the Itapicuru and lower Alpercatas, and through the Parnaíba and Balsas river valleys). They thus suffered fewer attacks by hired gunmen, since they were less exposed than the Kapiekran, who inhabited the more level lands to the east and south along the Itapicuru and lower Alpercatas. At the beginning of the 1830s, the fertile lands of the headwaters of the Corda River and surrounding areas were occupied by a cattle-raising family. Thus the Apanyekrá came to live with the Brazilian inlanders who lived immediately to the south, which did not happen with the Ramkokamekrá.

The Apanyekrá have stories which probably date to the 19^th Century, which tell of a time when they were subject to the strong control of a local rancher. He employed them on his ranch and in household chores. His gunmen slept with their women. The rancher would provide cattle for the festivals, in which everyone danced in the style of the backlands (embraced).

Around 1950, the SPI began to pay na inlander to live with the Apanyekrá and set up a post there. In contrast with the employees of the Ramkokamekrá post at that time, the head of the Apanyekrá post was more respectful and discrete in relation to the Indians, and protected them from the ranchers. The Apanyekrá continued to move their village periodically to different places on their lands, taking with them the "elementary post" and the head of the post. I found their village in the area of Águas Claras in 1958, Porquinhos in 1960, Rancharia in 1966 and 1971, and in another place in the area of Porquinhos in 1974 and 1975. They have not moved from Porquinhos since then, staying near the new post of the Funai and the building with school and infirmary, both built in brick and tile at the beginning of the 1970s.

In 1963, when the ranchers attacked the Ramkokamekrá, who were then engaged in a messianic movement, they also threatened to take the lands of the Apanyekrá. The threats continued and some peripheral lands were occupied by a rancher, who took the military engineering garrison at Barra do Corda to clear a landing strip in the area of Porquinhos around 1965, in order to protect the Indians.

The Apanyekrá were more isolated than the Ramkokamekrá not only because they were more distant from Barra do Corda, but also because the forests along the Corda River cover almost continuously the area between the city and Porquinhos, making the construction of a road directly between the two difficult. The road from Barra do Corda to the Ramkokamekrá, by contrast, crosses through only areas of brush and scrub forests and needed only a bridge, which was built in 1971. Around 1978, trucks which went from Barra do Corda to Porquinhos had to go first south to the Ramkokamekrá village of Escalvado/Ponto, in such a way as to cross the scrub forest near the headwaters of various waterways of the area over newly-constructed bridges in order to reach Porquinhos.