The purpose of this paper is to emphasize the importance of historiography as an organizing tool during the making of the imperial regime in Brazil, for it was able among other things to attest the social, political and territorial gains throughout the colonial period. I stress the historiographical divergence between defenders and detractors of their presence in national History, the connection of this intellectual debate with the Imperial indigenist policy and finally the emergence of a national trend in the indigenist historiography and policy, which led to an artificial extinction of the Indian presence and identity in our society and in imperial history while considering them henceforth exclusively as Brazilians.
indians; Empire; national history