1,000,000 (historically), Potiguara 10,837, Tupinambá de Olivença 3,000, Tupiniquim 2,630, others extinct as tribes but blood ancestors to Pardo Brazilian population
The Tupi people, a subdivision of the Tupi-Guarani linguistic families, were one of the largest groups of indigenous peoples in Brazil before its colonization. Scholars believe that while they first settled in the Amazon rainforest, from about 2,900 years ago the Tupi started to migrate southward and gradually occupied the Atlantic coast of Southeast Brazil.[1]
Tupi (violet) and Tupi-Guaraní (pink) languages areas and early probable areas (pink-gray)
The Tupi people inhabited 3/4 of all of Brazil's coast when the Portuguese first arrived there. In 1500, their population was estimated at 1 million people, nearly equal to the population of Portugal at the time. They were divided into tribes, each tribe numbering from 300 to 2,000 people. Some examples of these tribes are: Tupiniquim, Tupinambá, Potiguara, Tabajara, Caetés, Temiminó, Tamoios. The Tupi were adept agriculturalists; they grew cassava, corn, sweet potatoes, beans, peanuts, tobacco, squash, cotton and many others. There was not a unified Tupi identity [citation needed] despite the fact that they spoke a common language.
European colonization
Upon discovering the existence of the Tupi people, it was assumed by Portuguese settlers that they lacked any sort of religion, a belief that began the process of assimilating the Tupi to Christianity.[3] The settlers began erecting villages for the Tupi, known as aldeias, with the intention of more disciplined religious conversion and institutionalization of European customs.[4] Aside from being assimilated, the Tupi were found to be of use to the Portuguese, who required laborers for cultivating and shipping their exports. This use in harvesting resources led to their eventual enslavement and in turn, the spread of fatal European diseases on the plantations they worked at.[5] This combination of factors nearly led to their complete annihilation, with the exception of a few isolated communities. The remnants of these tribes are today confined to indigenous territories or acculturated to some degree into the dominant society.[6]
Cannibalism
According to primary source accounts by primarily European writers, the Tupi were divided into several tribes which would constantly engage in war with each other. In these wars the Tupi would normally try to capture their enemies to later kill them in cannibalistic rituals.[6] The warriors captured from other Tupi tribes were eaten as it was believed by them that this would lead to their strength being absorbed and digested; thus, in fear of absorbing weakness, they chose only to sacrifice warriors perceived to be strong and brave. For the Tupi warriors, even when prisoners, it was a great honor to die valiantly during battle or to display courage during the festivities leading to the sacrifice.[7] The Tupi have also been documented to eat the remains of dead relatives as a form of honoring them.[8]
The practice of cannibalism among the Tupi was made famous in Europe by Hans Staden, a German soldier, mariner, and mercenary, traveling to Brazil to seek a fortune, who was captured by the Tupi in 1552. In his account published in 1557, he tells that the Tupi carried him to their village where it was claimed he was to be devoured at the next festivity. There, he allegedly won the friendship of a powerful chief, whom he cured of a disease, and his life was spared.[9]
Cannibalistic rituals among Tupi and other tribes in Brazil decreased steadily after European contact and religious intervention. When Cabeza de Vaca, a Spanish conquistador, arrived in Santa Catarina in 1541, for instance, he attempted to ban cannibalistic practices in the name of the King of Spain.[10]
Because our understanding of Tupi cannibalism relies mostly on primary source accounts of primarily European writers, the very existence of cannibalism has been disputed by some in academic circles. William Arens seeks to discredit Staden's and other writers' accounts of cannibalism in his book The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology & Anthropophagy, where he claims that when concerning the Tupinambá, "rather than dealing with an instance of serial documentation of cannibalism, we are more likely confronting only one source of dubious testimony which has been incorporated almost verbatim into the written reports of others claiming to be eyewitnesses".[11]
Most Brazilian scholars, however, attest to the cultural centrality of cannibalism in Tupian culture. Anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro who had deeply studied the historical accounts about the Tupi, reported that the Ka'apor people of the Tupi-Guaraní linguistic and cultural family confirmed that their ancestors had practiced anthropophagical rituals similar to the ones described in the 16th century.[12] Other Brazilian scholars have criticized Arens for what they perceived as historical negationism, and for ignoring important sources (Jesuit letters) and historical and anthropological studies (Viveiros de Castro, Florestan Fernandes, Estevão Pinto, Hélène Clastres), many of them dealing directly with indigenous peoples, that point to the direction of anthropophagy being well established as a social and cultural practice. He was particularly criticized[by whom?] for trying to discredit the association of the Tupi with savagery, not by realizing that the Europeans failed to comprehend the meaning of traditional practices such as cannibalism, but by promptly negating their existence altogether.[13]
Race-mixing and Cunhadismo
A Tupinambá named "Louis Henri", who visited Louis XIII in Paris in 1613, in Claude d'Abbeville, Histoire de la mission.
Many indigenous peoples were important for the formation of the Brazilian people, but the main group was the Tupi. When the Portuguese explorers arrived in Brazil in the 16th century, the Tupi were the first indigenous group to have contact with them. Soon, a process of mixing between Portuguese settlers and indigenous women started. The Portuguese colonists rarely brought women, making the native women the "breeding matrix of the Brazilian people".[6] When the first Europeans arrived, the phenomenon of "cunhadismo" (from Portuguese cunhado, "brother in law") began to spread by the colony. Cunhadismo was an old native tradition of incorporating strangers to their community. The Natives offered the Portuguese an Indigenous girl as wife. Once he agreed, he formed a bond of kinship with all the Natives of the tribe. Polygyny, a common practice among South American Indigenous people, was quickly adopted by European settlers. This way, a single European man could have dozens of indigenous wives (temericós).[6]
Cunhadismo was used as recruitment of labour. The Portuguese could have many temericós and thus a huge number of Indigenous relatives who were induced to work for him, especially to cut pau-brasil and take it to the ships on the coast. In the process, a large mixed-race (mameluco) population was formed, which in fact occupied Brazil. Without the practice of cunhadismo, the Portuguese colonization was impractical. The number of Portuguese men in Brazil was very small and Portuguese women were even fewer in number. The proliferation of mixed-race people in the wombs of indigenous women provided for the occupation of the territory and the consolidation of the Portuguese presence in the region.[6]
Influence in Brazil
Although the Tupi population largely disappeared because of European diseases to which they had no resistance or because of slavery, a large population of maternal Tupi ancestry occupied much of Brazilian territory, taking the ancient traditions to several points of the country. Darcy Ribeiro wrote that the features of the first Brazilians were much more Tupi than Portuguese, and even the language that they spoke was a Tupi-based language, named Nheengatu or Língua Geral, a lingua franca in Brazil until the 18th century.[6] The region of São Paulo was the biggest in the proliferation of Mamelucos, who in the 17th century under the name of Bandeirantes, spread throughout the Brazilian territory, from the Amazon rainforest to the extreme South. They were responsible for the major expansion of the Iberian culture in the interior of Brazil. They acculturated the indigenous tribes who lived in isolation, and took the language of the colonizer, which was not Portuguese yet, but Nheengatu itself, to the most inhospitable corners of the colony. Nheengatu is still spoken in certain regions of the Amazon, although the Tupi-speaking Natives did not live there. The Nheengatu language, as in other regions of the country, was introduced there by Bandeirantes from São Paulo in the 17th century. The way of life of the OldPaulistas could almost be confused with the Natives. Within the family, only Nheengatu was spoken. Agriculture, hunting, fishing and gathering of fruits were also based on indigenous traditions. What differentiated the Old Paulistas from the Tupi was the use of clothes, salt, metal tools, weapons and other European items.[6]
When these areas of large Tupi influence started to be integrated into the market economy, Brazilian society gradually started to lose its Tupi characteristics. The Portuguese language became dominant and Língua Geral virtually disappeared. The rustic indigenous techniques of production were replaced by European ones, in order to elevate the capacity of exportation.[6]Brazilian Portuguese absorbed many words from Tupi. Some examples of Portuguese words that came from Tupi are: mingau, mirim, soco, cutucar, tiquinho, perereca, tatu. The names of several local fauna – such as arara ("macaw"), jacaré ("South American alligator"), tucano ("toucan") – and flora – e.g. mandioca ("manioc") and abacaxi ("pineapple") – are also derived from the Tupi language. A number of places and cities in modern Brazil are named in Tupi (Itaquaquecetuba,Pindamonhangaba,Caruaru, Ipanema). Anthroponyms include Ubirajara, Ubiratã, Moema, Jussara, Jurema, Janaína.[14] Tupi surnames do exist, but they do not imply any real Tupi ancestry; rather they were adopted as a manner to display Brazilian nationalism.[15]
The large offshore Tupi oil field discovered off the coast of Brazil in 2006 was named in honor of the Tupi people.
The Guaraní are a different native group that inhabits southern Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia and northern Argentina and speaks the distinct Guaraní languages, but these are in the same language family as Tupi.
Legacy
The Tupi people had a great cultural influence on the countries they inhabited. Innumerable people, streets, neighborhoods, cities, rivers, animals, fruits, plants, football clubs, companies in Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina and Uruguay are named in Guarani.[16][17][18][19]
ParamariboParama ývo ("down the sea"). (Referring to the Caribbean Sea, since although Suriname is part of the Caribbean, it is near the Amazon Delta, in the South Atlantic Ocean).
Indigenous peoples once comprised an estimated 2,000 tribes and nations inhabiting what is now the country of Brazil, before European contact around 1500 AD.
Tupi–Guarani is the most widely distributed subfamily of the Tupian languages of South America. It consists of about fifty languages, including Guarani and Old Tupi. The most widely spoken in modern times by far is Guarani, which is one of the two official languages of Paraguay.
Old Tupi, Ancient Tupi or Classical Tupi is a dead Tupian language which was spoken by the aboriginal Tupi people of Brazil, mostly those who inhabited coastal regions in South and Southeast Brazil. In the words of Brazilian tupinologist Eduardo Navarro, "it is the classical indigenous language of Brazil, and the one which had the utmost importance to the cultural and spiritual formation of the country".
The Tupinambá are one of the various Tupi ethnic groups that inhabit present-day Brazil, and whom had been living there long before the conquest of the region by Portuguese colonial settlers. The name Tupinambá was also applied to other Tupi-speaking groups, such as the Tupiniquim, Potiguara, Tupinambá, Temiminó, Caeté, Tabajara, Tamoio, and Tupinaé, among others. Before and during their first contact with the Portuguese, the Tupinambás had been living along the entire Eastern Atlantic coast of Brazil.
Hans Staden was a German soldier and explorer who voyaged to South America in the middle of the sixteenth century, where he was captured by the Tupinambá people of Brazil. He managed to survive and return safe to Europe. In his widely read True History: An Account of Cannibal Captivity in Brazil, he claimed that the native people that held him captive practiced cannibalism.
The Nheengatu or Nenhengatu language, or Nenhengatu, also known as Modern Tupi and Amazonic Tupi, is a Tupi–Guarani language.
The Tupí or Tupinambá languages are a subgroup of the Tupi–Guarani language family.
The Apiacá, or Apiaká, are an indigenous people of Brazil, who live in northern Mato Grosso, near the border of Pará. They speak an Apiacá language that is a subgroup part of the Tupi-Guarani languages, though many today speak Portuguese. Prior to the 19th century, the Apiacá were a warlike tribe with a heavily agricultural culture. Around the mid-19th century, their numbers began to decline. This decrease coincided with the contact of European settlers in Brazil. Though thought to be extinct, their numbers, today, are increasing. In 2001, there were only 192 Apiaká. As of 2009, there are a thousand Apiaká people.
José Oswald de Souza Andrade was a Brazilian poet, novelist and cultural critic. He was born in, spent most of his life in, and died in São Paulo.
Portuguese is the official and national language of Brazil being widely spoken by most of the population. Brazil is the most populous Portuguese-speaking country in the world, with its lands comprising the majority of Portugal's former colonial holdings in the Americas.
The Caeté were an Indigenous people of Brazil, linguistically belonging to the Tupi people.
The Tremembé or Teremembé people are an indigenous people in the states of Ceará and Maranhão in Brazil.
Warázu, also known as Pauserna or Guarasugwé (Guarasú'we), is a moribund Tupi–Guaraní language of Brazil. It was also formerly spoken in Bolivia. It is spoken by the Guarasugwé people, who were estimated to number 125 according to a census in 2012.
True History: An Account of Cannibal Captivity in Brazil is an account published by the German soldier Hans Staden in 1557 describing his two trips to the new world. The book is best known for Staden's descriptions of his experiences while held captive by the Tupinambá near Bertioga, Brazil. True History became one of the best-selling travel narratives of the sixteenth century.
Eduardo de Almeida Navarro is a Brazilian philologist and lexicographer, specialist in Old Tupi and Nheengatu. He is a full professor at the University of São Paulo, where he has been teaching Old Tupi since 1993, and Nheengatu since 2009. Eduardo Navarro is also the author of the books Método moderno de tupi antigo, 1998, and Dicionário de tupi antigo, 2013, important works on the Tupi language.
The Tupinambá Uprising (1617-1621), also called the Tupinambá Revolt, took place on January 13, 1618, and was led by the tuxaua (cacique) Cabelo de Velha, who gathered several native indigenous groups from the busy Mairi region to fight against the Portuguese, due to the abuses committed by these colonizers when they exploited the indigenous labor force in the Conquest of Pará. This movement was one of a series of uprisings that took place in the region between 1617 and 1619. The disputes culminated in the attack in January 1619 by the Tupinambá on the Presépio Fort, located on the shores of Guajará Bay.
The Dicionário de Tupi Antigo: a língua indígena clássica do Brasil was compiled by the Brazilian lexicographer and philologist Eduardo de Almeida Navarro and published in 2013. The work was conceived with the goal of spreading knowledge of the Tupi language to a broader public.
During the 16th-century colonization of Brazil, Old Tupi was the predominant language in the coastal regions of the country. Despite some dialectical variations, it became imperative for the fewer colonizers to learn it for territorial conquest. The earliest records of the language date back to the 1510s, but a substantial record was only produced in the 1540s. Jesuits played a crucial role in formalizing its grammar, with Joseph of Anchieta composing a grammar for it in 1555. Through miscegenation, Old Tupi permeated Brazilian society to the extent that even the children of Portuguese spoke it natively. Over time, it gave rise to lingua francas and contributed various words and a distinctive literature to Brazilian Portuguese and its society.
Cunhambira refers, among the Tupi tribes of Brazil, to the son or daughter of a prisoner with a woman from the village where he had been held captive. The child was usually killed and subsequently eaten in a cannibalistic ritual.
↑ LaRosa, Michael; Mejia, German R. (2019). An Atlas and Survey of Latin American History (2nded.). United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis. ISBN9781138089068.
↑ Pacifi, Sergio J. (1955). Copy of a Letter of the King of Portugal Sent to the King of Castile Concerning the Voyage and Success of India (Newed.). University of Minnesota Press. pp.3–25. ISBN978-1-4529-3685-7.
↑ Coello de la Rosa, Alexandre (2019). "3 The Marianas as Part of the Universal Christian Project". Gathering Souls: Jesuit Missions and Missionaries in Oceania. Netherlands: Brill. pp.9–17. ISBN978-90-04-39485-8.
↑ Hawkins, Christina (2017). "Tupinambá". Latin American History and Culture: Encyclopedia of Pre-Colonial Latin America (Prehistory to 1550s) (1sted.). New York City, New York: Facts on File. ISBN978-1-4381-6344-4.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Darcy Ribeiro – O Povo Brasileiro, Vol. 07, 1997 (1997), pp. 28 to 33; 72 to 75 and 95 to 101."
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