As bases históricas da formação territorial piauiense

Abstract

This article pretends to study the piauiense’s territorial formation from its origins since the begining of its occupation at the end of the seventeenth century, when groups of adventurers looking for indians as well as new lands for cattle raising penetrated the sertões’s region. After tresspassing the watershed between the rivers São Francisco and Parnaíba, they founded next to the oriental margin of this last one several cattle ranches, in territories that would later constitute the Piauí. It is pretended to evaluate in which way the cattle raising activities helped to define the piauiense’s territory’s historical basis, its earth’s and natural resources use, as well as the social agents involved in this process.