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The oldest data regarding the Fulni-ô population
are from 1749, when, according to the "Informação
Geral da Capitania de Pernambuco" – General
Information of the Captaincy of Pernambuco – (1906),
there were 323 individual belonging to that ethnic group
living in the village of Ribeira do Panema. Estêvão
Pinto, using as source reports by the Diretoria dos Índios
– Indian Directorship –, says that, in 1855,
the Fulni-ô were 738; but by 1861 their number had
been reduced by half, since only 382 individuals, comprising
90 families, were left (Pinto, 1956:25). The author comments
that the cause for this may have been an epidemic of cholera
that ravaged the village in 1856. By 1873, the Fulni-ô
had been reduced to less than 100 (Costa Júnior,
1942:11; Pinto, 1956: 26).
Gradually the population recovered; in 1922,
the village had approximately 500 Indians “...
living in 150 huts, almost all of them made of straw”
(Pinto, 1956: 26). We deduce that, by 1937, the number
of Fulni-ô had already increased since, in an
article written around that time, Carlos Estêvão
de Oliveira, when referring to the group, comments that
there were one thousand individuals that spoke Ia-tê
(1942: 171).
It is possible that the figure Carlos Estêvão
de Oliveira gave was a bit optimistic since, according
to the 1945 and 1948 reports of the 4th Inspetoria Regional
(Regional Inspectorship), the village had respectively
823 and 1,263 inhabitants (Pinto, 1956: 26). By 1982,
the village had 2,668 residents; the number had increased
to 2,788 by 1989, according to the Funai (Povos Indígenas
no Brasil 1991/1996, ISA, 1996).
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