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The collective memory of the Xukuru Indians, as well as historical records, register the migration to the southern Zona da Mata of Pernambuco, called “the South” by the Indians. The Xukuru report in their oral traditions that because of the violence of the landowners who invaded the lands of the old village of Cimbres, indigenous families who fled from persecution, hunger, and drought,swelled the large numbers of workers dispersed from neighboring regions or who migrated to more distant places. Many families went to work on sugar cane plantations. Xukuru Indians who had small plots of land and migrated periodically because of drought, returned to their places of origins with the first rains. Others, for lack of land or lack of work for survival, also migrated to the Zona da Mata in Pernambuco and Alagoas, where they established themselves, reinventing their lives and their relationships in the world of sugar.