The Brazilian sugar-plantation colony began with the extensive use of Indian labor. From the vantage point of the present, Indian slavery appears to have been a passing moment in this history of colonial export agriculture in Northeast Brazil–and so it was. But to leave this formative stage with only a systemic account of its position within the process of European expansion, or to see it as simply a preview of what was to follow, is to tell only a part of the story. To the people who lived in these times, the inevitability of the transition was far less apparent. The Indians who underwent this experience inhabited a world whose perimeters were often defined by others, and the Indians were forced to accommodate themselves to new modes of behavior. From the viewpoint of the Portuguese, the period of Indian slavery was one in which the system of labor relations was worked out in detail.