From the early colonial period, the Brazilian population was composed of a great number of blacks and pardos, enslaved and free, a significant number of Indigenous peoples subjected to slavery or living under similar conditions, many working side by side with black people and pardos, and a mix of these peoples and whites. Putting an exact number on how many people were enslaved is difficult. For those imported from Africa to Brazil, the numbers vary from 3.5 million to 5 million people, while for the Indigenous population subjected to slavery, there are no figures, probably because the practice had been illegal since the seventeenth century, with various laws prohibiting the enslavement of Indigenous peoples from 1609 to 1757. The practice, however, persisted until the twentieth century in isolated regions of Brazil. ${ }^{8}$  
Further, from the first years of colonization, interracial relationships were not only common, but were actually supported by the State, as in the case of Portuguese and Indigenous marriages as a means of what was considered a civilizing of the natives and of protecting the territory (Buarque de Holanda, 1956, 1985). Miscegenation between Indigenous peoples and blacks was common, since most of the Africans imported to be used as slaves were males, and colonialist attacks on Indigenous villages killed most of the adult males, leaving children and women under the domination of farmers. The cafuzo, a person of mixed Indigenous and black descent, was quite common and was defended by intellectuals such as José Bonifácio de Andrada e Silva, who saw in this miscegenation the key to generating a 'Brazilian element' and reinforcing nationalist feelings (Dolhnikoff, 1998). The participation of Europeans, particularly the Portuguese, in the miscegenation pool is widely explored by Gilberto Freyre, who discusses miscegenation as one of the tools of Portuguese colonization and describes how the colonizer used his power to interact with all groups (1998).