Tupinambá

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Tupinambá

Tupinambá, Tupi-speaking peoples of coastal Brazil. While colonial sources specifically identify the Tupinambá with Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, and Maranhão, modern ethnologists employ the term to designate all the coastal Tupi. Expert warriors, the Tupinambá engaged in constant combat with other Tupi groups, each taking captives who were submitted to lengthy rituals culminating in sacrifice and cannibalism.

Tupinambá warfare, as a fundamental aspect of intervillage relations, in turn provided one of the keys to the European conquest of the coastal region. Initially, local groups forged alliances with Portuguese and French interests in order to gain the upper hand against traditional enemies. But the Europeans were interested mainly in slaves, which distorted the traditional goals of warfare and moved the Tupinambá to resist colonial rule. The Tupinambá's refusal to abandon ritual sacrifice and cannibalism led the Portuguese to launch brutal military campaigns in Bahia and Rio de Janeiro, especially during Mem de Sá's tenure as captain-general (1557–1572). This policy resulted in the enslavement of many and the confinement of others in Jesuit missions (reducões).

Following their military defeat, which was exacerbated by epidemic disease, several Tupinambá groups embarked on long migrations, led by charismatic prophets. The majority settled on the northern coast of Maranhão and in the middle Amazon Valley, while one small contingent reached Spanish Peru. Another prophetic resistance movement, known as the Santidade, flourished closer to Bahia during the second half of the sixteenth century. By the mid-seventeenth century, the coastal Tupinambá no longer existed as an independent indigenous society.

See alsoIndigenous Peoples; Slavery: Brazil.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Stuart Schwartz provides cogent summaries of Tupinambá society and history, with particular emphasis on Bahia, in Early Latin America (1983) and Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society (1985). Tupinambá relations with the Europeans receive detailed treatment in John Hemming, Red Gold (1978). The classic Brazilian work remains Florestan Fernandes, Organização social dos Tupinambá (1948).