Tupi people

"Tupinamba" redirects here. For the visual artist, see Yara Tupinambá.

A Tupi woman

The Tupi people were one of the main ethnic groups of Brazilian indigenous people. Scholars believe they first settled in the Amazon rainforest, but 2,900 years ago they started to spread southward and gradually occupied the Atlantic coast.

History

The Tupi people inhabited almost all of Brazil's coast when the Portuguese first arrived there. In 1500, their population was estimated at 1 million people, nearly the same population of Portugal at that time. They were divided into dozens of tribes, each tribe numbering from 300 to 2,000 people. Examples of tribes are: Tupiniquim, Tupinambá, Potiguara, Tabajara, Caetés, Temiminó, Tamoios. The Tupi knew agriculture and therefore exceed a Palaeolithic condition. They grew cassava, corn, sweet potatoes, beans, peanuts, tobacco, squash, cotton and many others. The Tupi often fought against the other tribes of the region or even among themselves, because there was not a unified Tupi identity. Despite the fact that they were a single ethnic group that spoke a common tongue, the Tupi were divided into several tribes which were constantly engaged in war with one another. In these wars the Tupi normally tried to capture their enemies to later kill them in cannibalistic rituals, instead of just killing them in battle.

Cannibalism was part of their ritual after a war. The warriors captured from other Tupi tribes were eaten as they believed they were absorbing their strength. The practice of cannibalism among the Tupi was known in Europe by Hans Staden, a German soldier and mariner who was captured by the Tupi. They carried him to their village where he claimed he was to be devoured at the next festivity. He allegedly won the friendship of a powerful chief, whom he cured of a disease, and his life was spared. Back in Europe, Staden published a book about his experience among the Brazilian Indians, which was published in 1557.

Cannibalism in Brazil as described by Hans Staden.

European colonization

From the sixteenth century onward the Tupi, like other natives from the region, were assimilated, enslaved or simply exterminated by Portuguese settlers and Bandeirantes (colonial Brazil scouts), nearly leading to their complete annihilation, with the exception of a few isolated communities. The remnants of these tribes are today confined to Indian reservations or acculturated to some degree into the dominant society..

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 Amerindian group to have contact with them. Soon, a process of miscegenation between Portuguese settlers and indigenous women started. The Portuguese colonists rarely brought women, making the Indian women the "breeding matrix of the Brazilian people". 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 Indian tradition of incorporating strangers to their community. The Indians offered the Portuguese an Indian girl as wife. Once he agreed, he formed a bond of kinship with all the Indians of the tribe. Polygyny, a common practice among South American Indians, was quickly adopted by European settlers. This way, a single European man could have dozens of Indian wives (temericós)..

Albert Eckhout: a mixed-race (Mameluco) woman (circa 1641-1644).

Cunhadismo was used as recruitment of labour. The Portuguese could have many temericós and thus a huge number of Indian 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 even less for Portuguese women. This proliferation of mixed-race people in the belly of Indian women is what provided the occupation of the territory and the consolidation of the Portuguese presence in the region..

Influence in Brazil

Although the Tupi population was exterminated because of slavery or because of European diseases to which they had no resistance, a large population of maternal Tupi ancestry occupied much of the 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. 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 Indian tribes who lived isolated, and took the language of the colonizer, which was not Portuguese yet, but Nheengatu itself, to the most inhospitable corners of the colony. Interestingly, the Nheengatu is still spoken in certain regions of the Amazon, although the Tupi-speaking Indians 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 Old Paulistas could almost be confused with the Indians. In family only Nheengatu was spoken. Agriculture, hunting, fishing and gathering of fruits were also based on Indian traditions. What differentiated the Tupi from the Old Paulistas was the use of clothes, salt, metal tools, weapons and other European items..

A Tupiniquim chief (Cacique) in (Brasília, 2007).

When these areas of large Tupi influence started to be integrated in the market economy, the Brazilian society, gradually, started to lose its Tupi characteristics . The Portuguese language became dominant and Língua Geral virtually disappeared. The rustic Indian techniques of productions were replaced by European ones, in order to elevate the capacity of exportation. From Tupi, Brazilian Portuguese absorbed many words. 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 (mandioca ("manioc"), 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. Tupi surnames do exist, but they do not imply any real Tupi ancestry; rather they were adopted as a manner to display Brazilian nationalism.

The tupinambá tribe is fictitiously portrayed in Nelson Pereira dos Santos' satirical 1971 film, How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman (Como Era Gostoso o Meu Francês).

A large offshore Tupi oil field discovered off the coast of Brazil in 2006 was named in honor of Tupi people.

The Guarani are a different native group which inhabits southern Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and northern Argentina and speaks the distinct Guaraní language, but it is usually thought to be the same language group as Tupi.

See also

• De Gestis Meni de Saa
• Guarani War
• José de Anchieta
• Língua Geral
• Manuel da Nóbrega
• Nhengatu
• Old Tupi
• Tupian languages

External links

• Portugal in America