Monteiro, John M (Brasil Século XVI)

THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY
OF THE NATIVE PEOPLES OF

THE AMERICAS
VOLUME III
SOUTH AMERICA
PART 1
Edited by
Frank Salomon Stuart B. Schwartz
University of Wisconsin- Yale University
Madison
CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

13
THE CRISES AND TRANSFORMATIONS
OF INVADED SOCIETIES: COASTAL
BRAZIL IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
JOHN M. MONTEIRO
"It is impossible either to enumerate or comprehend the multitude of

barbarous heathen that Nature has planted throughout this land of Bra-
zil," wrote Portuguese chronicler Pero de Magalhaes Gandavo, around
1570.' To be sure, the enormous cultural and linguistic diversity of
lowland South America presented a stiff challenge to sixteenth-century
Portuguese observers, in spite of their considerable experience with the
intricate political configurations of coastal Africa, South Asia, and the
Far East. Even so, early European writers left relatively abundant, detailed
descriptions of coastal populations. Portuguese, French, German, and
English chronicles and reports, along with the massive letters and rela-
tions penned by Jesuits, constitute a wide array of sources for the recon-
struction of indigenous social organization. However, although this ma-
terial has been central to Brazilian ethnological debates over the
development, dispersion, and structure of Tupi culture for much of the
twentieth century, it has been all but abandoned by mainstream Brazilian
historiography for over a century. Indeed, the historical dimension of
indigenous societies and of their relations with the European invaders
remains a glaringly neglected facet of the history of Portuguese America.
Although rich in information and detail, the early literature on indig-
enous Brazil showed some difficulty in discerning territorial divisions,
political organization, and religious institutions in terms familiar to the
Western experience. Sixteenth-century writers sought to simplify the
intricate mosaic of languages and societies by dividing the native popu-
lation into broad generic groups. Most of the coastal societies, sharing
practically identical cultural attributes, came to be called Tupi, and their
1
Pero Magalhaes Gandavo, Tratado da Terra do Brasil e Histdria da Provincia Santa Cruz (Sao
Paulo and Belo Horizonte, 1980), 52.
973
974 John Monteiro
language the lingua geral da costa ('common language of the coast'). But
the cultural affinity between Tupi societies failed to correspond to any
sort of political unity: From the European perspective, the most remark-
able characteristic of the Tupi lay precisely in the constant warfare
between competing segments. Referring to the Indians of Porto Seguro
and Espirito Santo in his important treatise on the peoples of Brazil,
Gabriel Soares de Sousa illustrated this apparent paradox: "And even
though the Tupinikin and Tupinamba are enemies, between them there
is no greater difference in language and customs than that between the
residents of Lisbon and those of Beira."2
This portrait of acute and persistent political fragmentation was en-
hanced further by the presence of a great number of non-Tupi societies
interspersed among the Tupi peoples along the coast, occupying vast
expanses of the interior of Portuguese America as well. These societies,
in effect representing dozens of unrelated language groups, were assem-
bled by early writers as a second generic category, the Tapuia. Also
referred to as nheengaibas (those who spoke badly), the so-called Tapuia
were defined in contrast to what was known about the Tupi. Although
this designation sought to classify the many groups possessing an appar-
ently simpler material culture than that of the coastal Tupi, it also
became a descriptive term for societies about which little was known;
indeed, the remarkably sophisticated classification schemes and the com-
plex social organization of the "simple" Ge-speaking groups began to call
for closer attention only in the twentieth century. Gabriel Soares de
Sousa openly admitted the limitations of his knowledge with reference to
the Tapuia: "Since the Tapuias are so many and so divided in bands,
customs and languages, in order to say much about them it would be
necessary to collect meticulously much information about their divisions,
life and customs; but at present this is not possible." Basically relying on
Tupi informants, early writers projected Tapuia groups as the antithesis
of Tupi society, thus describing them ordinarily in negative terms.
Although grossly oversimplifying the cultural makeup of coastal Brazil,
the Tupi-Tapuia dichotomy did reflect fundamentally different traditions
as well as distinct forms of social organization. In his interesting account
of the Indians of coastal Bahia, Soares de Sousa outlined the historical
dimension of the Tupi-Tapuia relationship. Relying on "information
2
Gabriel Soares de Sousa, Tratado Dctcritivo do Brasilem I;8J (Sao Paulo, 1971), 88.

Invaded Societies: i6th-Century Coastal Brazil 975
taken from the oldest Indians," Soares de Sousa asserted that the first
inhabitants of the region were the Tapuia, "who are an ancient caste of
heathen." At a certain point in the remote past, the Tapuia were expelled
from the coast by the Tupina, a Tupi group, "who came from the
backlands in search of the reputed abundance of the land and sea of this
province." After many generations, "when the Tupinamba learned of the
greatness and fertility of this land," this new group invaded the lands of
the Tupina, "destroying their villages and fields, killing those who re-
sisted, sparing no one, until they managed to expel the Tupina from the
edge of the sea." In conclusion Soares de Sousa wrote: "Thus the Tupi-
namba have remained lords of this province of Bahia for many years,
waging war against their enemies with great effort, until the arrival of the
Portuguese; this information was taken from the Tupinamba and Tup-
ina, in whose memory these stories pass from generation to generation."
Of course, one might argue that Soares de Sousa simply sought to
elaborate an historical framework within which the Portuguese conquest
would fit harmoniously. But the Tupinamba's rise to prominence in
coastal Bahia probably stands as one of the most significant events in the
precolonial history of Brazil, coinciding with the emergence of other
Tupi and Guarani groups throughout eastern South America.
While most sixteenth-century observers showed little interest in the
historical relationship between Tupi and Tapuia, they all pointed out
obvious fundamental differences that justified this typology. Gabriel
Soares de Sousa, for example, in his description of the Guaiana of
southern Brazil, clearly set them apart from the coastal Tupi:
They are people of little work, much leisure, they do not work the land, they
live from the game they hunt and the fish they take from the rivers, and the
wild fruits that the forest yields; diey are great archers and enemies of human
flesh. . . . These heathen do not live in villages with neat houses, like their
neighbors the Tamoios, but in hovels in the fields, under the ground, where
they keep a fire burning night and day and make their beds of twigs and of
skins taken from the animals they slay.
This description stands in stark contrast to Tupi societies, who had a
more sedentary settlement pattern, developed a varied and productive
horticultural base, and placed great importance on activities related to
warfare, sacrifice, and cannibalism. These differences were to play an
important role in the patterns of Indian - white relations that emerged
following the arrival of the Europeans (Map 13.1).

976 John Monteiro
Coastal Brazil, ca. 1560

• Portuguese settlements
KARIRI Indigenous groups
lvador(1549)
[lhe\is (1536)
>rto Seguro (1535)
ipfrito Santo (1551)
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
ieiro (1565)
'anta Catarina Island
Map 13. i
INDIGENOUS POPULATIONS OF THE BRAZILIAN COAST

The Tupi-Tapuia dichotomy may have helped the Portuguese organize
their perception of the cultural configurations of indigenous Brazil, but
it also masked an ethnic complexity that remains difficult to sort out to
this day. In linguistic terms, societies belonging to at least forty distinct
language families flourished during the sixteenth century within the
present territorial limits of Brazil. Many of these families have been

classified as belonging to three language trunks: Tupi, Macro-Ge, and
Arawak. The coastal Tupi, speakers of the lingua geral, as well as the
southern Guarani, all spoke related dialects of Tupi-Guarani, one of nine
known language families in the Tupi trunk. Peoples identified as Tapuia
in the sources in many cases spoke variants of Ge, a language of the
Macro-Ge trunk. Often little was known about these groups, however,
and several non-Ge peoples were listed as Tapuias in the early literature,
including the Kariri of the northeast, the Waitaka (Goitaca) of the east,
and the Puri of the southeast, whose respective languages later came to
be classified as isolated. Finally, Arawak-and Karib-speakers, as well as
members of other specific linguistic affiliations, though having sporadic
contact with isolated European expeditions in the sixteenth century, were
to become more fully engaged with Portuguese America only in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Because early Portuguese colonial activities remained tied basically to
the Atlantic coast, Tupi-Guarani peoples became the central protagonists
of sixteenth-century Portuguese-Indian relations. Strikingly similar in
terms of language, social organization, and ritual activities, a large num-
ber of local groups covered an extensive, though discontinuous, area
ranging over 4,000 kilometers, from the Amazon to the River Platte
Basin. Archaeologists and ethnohistorians, concerned not only with the
origins and dispersion of Tupi-Guarani culture but also with significant
differences in historical traditions, divide this enormous whole into two,
broad parts. The many groups inhabiting the coast between the future
captaincy of Sao Vicente and the mouth of the Amazon came to be
known collectively as the Tupinamba, though early sources attribute a
much greater variety of ethnic designations in reference to the coastal
Tupi. The second subdivision of the Tupi-Guarani, the Guarani, occu-
pied vast stretches of river floodplains and subtropical forests to the south
of the captaincy of Sao Vicente, between the Atlantic coast and the
Parana-Paraguay river system.3
The territorial boundaries of Tupi groups remain difficult to ascertain
from existing evidence, especially when one considers that spatial mobil-
ity was one of the central characteristics of Tupi-Guarani culture. None-
theless the early literature often identified groups specifically in terms of
3
For a fuller treatment of the Guarani and their relations with the Portuguese, see Chapters 14 and
18 in this volume, as well as John Monteiro, "Os guarani e a hist6ria do Brasil meridional," in M.
Carneiro da Cunha (ed.), Historia dot Indios no Brasil (Sao Paulo, 1992), 475-498.
978 John Monteiro
their hostile relations with other Tupi groups or with Tapuia enemies.
For example, in the southernmost captaincy of Sao Vicente, the Tupini-
kin maintained constant hostilities with the Karijo (Guarani) to the south
and the Tamoio (Tupinamba) to the north. These same Tamoio, residing
along the coast of Rio de Janeiro, also held as enemies the Tememino,
who occupied the coast between the southern Paraiba and Doce rivers.
Other Tupinikin groups dominated much of the eastern seaboard be-
tween Espirito Santo and the Bay of All Saints, where they clashed with
the Tupinamba, located between the bay and the mouth of the Sao
Francisco River. The Tupinae also were enemies of these Tupinamba,
engaging in persistent warfare along the Paraguacii River. In the hinter-
land along the Sao Francisco River, there lived another populous Tupi
group, the Amoipira. Between the Sao Francisco and northern Paraiba
rivers, the Caet6 faced the Tupinamba to the south and the Tobajara to
the north. Farther up the coast, beginning at Itamaraca Island and almost
reaching Sao Luis, the powerful Potiguar maintained hostile relations
with the Caete, the Tobajara, and, finally, with the Tupinamba, who
came to occupy the island of Sao Luis and much of the coast to the
southern shore of the Amazon.4
Groups identified as Tapuia in colonial times also may be located
tentatively in terms of their relations with Tupi groups or with Portu-
guese colonists, though their mobility was even greater in historical times.
In the far south, the Guaiana, probably a reference to the Kaingang, were
in permanent contact with Karijo, Tupinikin, and Tamoio groups. Near
the southern Paraiba River, the Waitaka established firm opposition to
Tupi expansion in the region, remaining a steady base of resistance to
the Portuguese in colonial times. Farther north, in the interior of the
future captaincies of Espirito Santo, Porto Seguro, and Ilheus, another
group showed an even more aggressive posture toward Tupi and Portu-
guese alike, becoming an archetype for the barbarous Tapuia: the Ai-
more. Many other Tapuia groups inhabiting the northeastern backlands
were known to the Portuguese already in the sixteenth century: The
Jesuit Fernao Cardim found little trouble in listing seventy-six distinct
Tapuia peoples in his 1583 relation. However, most of these groups
became involved with Portuguese colonial activities only during the sec-
4
It seems likely that the Tupinamba of aMaranhao were late arrivals, migrating northward in retreat
from Portuguese expansion along the northeast coast during the sixteenth century. See Florestan
Fernandes, Organizagdo Social dos Tupinambi (Sao Paulo, 1948), 29—44.

ond half of the seventeenth century, when the expansion of the cattle
industry along the Sao Francisco River and throughout the interior of
the northeastern captaincies resulted in drawn-out conflicts with the
Indians.
If identifying the geographical distribution of the native peoples of
sixteenth-century coastal Brazil remains an imprecise science, calculating
their population faces many of the same challenges and problems. Spatial
mobility, the repetition of generic names in different places and at
different times, and the poor quality of population reports in the early
sources, all have contributed to the incipient character of the demo-
graphic history of indigenous Brazil. Although most global appraisals
have taken into account multiple factors, including eyewitness colonial
accounts, territorial and ecological considerations, and the size and den-
sity of current indigenous societies, results have been widely divergent,
often distorted — either upward or downward — by projections based on
population density estimates.
The most complete example of this exercise in "educated guessing"
may be found in John Hemming's Red Gold (1978), which shows both
the advances and limitations of historical demography as applied to
sixteenth-century Brazil. Listing all groups known in the historical and
ethnological bibliography, Hemming assessed the so-called original pop-
ulation case by case, arriving at the figure of 2,431,000 Indians, among
which the coastal Tupi (not including the Guarani) accounted for about
625,000. Hemming's figures, though generally held to be the most rea-
sonable, inspire some reservations. Some specific cases need to be revised
in light of current research; for example, his estimate of 6,000 for the
Paiagua recently was brought into question, based on evidence describing
large concentrations of war canoes along the Paraguay River.5 Another
problem emerges in the compression of five centuries of widely varying
information into the single historical moment of 1500. Some groups are
in effect double-counted, such as the Tupinamba of Maranhao and Para
or the Tobajara of the Ibiapaba Hills, because they had migrated during
the sixteenth century in retreat from Portuguese slaving activities and
were once again contacted and counted in the early seventeenth. A more
serious case is that of the Canoeiros of Goias, a group that simply did
not exist in 1500 because this society in effect was reconstituted in the
5
Barbara Ganson, "The Evuevi of Paraguay: Adaptive strategies and responses to colonialism, 1528—
1811," The Americas 45(4) (1989), 468.

980 John Monteiro
eighteenth century by runaway slaves possibly of Guarani origin. In short,

Hemming's perspective assumes the stagnation of population size and
dynamics in 1500, after which indigenous populations began to suffer an
almost inexorable decline. As a result the history of these "peoples with-
out history" becomes the chronicle of their extinction, which appears to
be the perspective adopted throughout the pages of Red Gold. It is true
that the impact of contact was universally negative on aboriginal peoples,
but the essential question should not be limited to how contact deci-
mated native populations. More importantly one must consider the role
and significance of indigenous demographic change in the early history
of the colony. Indeed, precolonial population dynamics, as well as the
multiple transformations that occurred following contact, were much
more complex and varied than a simple numerical decline.
Although the debate over the size and density of preconquest popula-
tions remains an open question, one important assertion may be estab-
lished. The information in eyewitness accounts, which is supported by a
growing number of archaeological investigations, convincingly suggests
that both the size and density of coastal and river floodplain populations
of the early sixteenth century were significantly greater than what is
found among modern forest peoples. Indeed, early reports on the Tupi-
namba along the coast, the Tupi-speaking Omagua on the upper Amazon
(Solimoes River), and the Guarani near the Parana-Paraguay Basin de-
scribe villages with well over a thousand inhabitants. This should hardly
be surprising, considering two major effects of colonial expansion on
native populations: radical demographic decline and strategic retreats to
less accessible regions. Nonetheless it does raise compelling questions
about the development of precontact social and political organization
before the arrival of Europeans. Did larger populations necessarily involve
more complex political structures, not unlike the chiefdoms of the cir-
cum-Caribbean? Was the constant warfare noted by all early observers a
function of territorial competition moved by population pressures? In
short, were early sixteenth-century Tupi societies more "sophisticated"
than their postconquest descendants?
Recent research on the evolution of lowland cultures, refuting environ-
mental circumscription theories and evaluating the agricultural potential
of tropical floodplains areas, has injected new blood into the debate.
Antonio Porro, for one, through a critical analysis of early Spanish
sources, offers a strong case for the development of Omagua chiefdoms,
while Anna Roosevelt, in her exhaustive appraisal of Amazonian archae-

ology, presents an even bolder argument in favor of the emergence of

floodplain chiefdoms, whose development would have been abruptly cut
off by the European "conquest" of the Amazon.6 Whereas fresh archae-
ological evidence may come to confirm or dispel hypotheses concerning
Amazonian chiefdoms, the ethnohistorical record on the coastal Tupi-
Guarani societies during the sixteenth century appears to point in a
different direction.
THE COASTAL TUPI PEOPLES

Thoroughly described in the early colonial literature, the coastal Tupi-
Guarani societies also came to occupy a distinguished position in Brazil-
ian anthropology. The classic studies of Alfred Metraux and Florestan
Fernandes, based on systematic readings of sixteenth- and early seven-
teenth-century sources, remain essential reference points for both ethno-
logical and ethnohistorical studies of native Brazilian societies. Writing
from different theoretical perspectives — the first diffusionist, and the
second functionalist — these two authors provide valuable, detailed anal-
yses of Tupinamba social organization, belief systems, migrations, and
warfare. However, precisely speaking, both Metraux and Fernandes have
produced ethnographic studies of past societies based on written ac-
counts; neither is preoccupied with Indian history, as such. Fernandes's
historical ethnography, for example, in identifying the internal dynamics
of Tupinamba social organization and reproduction as a closed system,
limits Tupinamba actions during the conquest to a series of "reactions"
attempting to restore precontact tribal integrity.7 In short, while Metraux
and Fernandes enrich our knowledge of extinct coastal societies, they
leave open a series of issues concerning the impact of colonial expansion
on the coastal peoples, as well as the relevance of Tupinamba history in
shaping patterns of Indian — white relations.
Tupi history has much to do with the reconstruction of coastal socie-
ties from the available record, but it also involves the ways in which past
events and processes informed native actions both before and after the
arrival of the Europeans. Although specific historical experiences were as
6
For cogent summaries of their respective positions, see the articles by Anna C. Roosevelt and
Antonio Porro, in Histdria dos tndios no Brasil, edited by Manuela Carneiro da Cunha (Sao Paulo,
1992), as well as Roosevelt's contribution to this volume (Chap. 4).
7
This position is made explicit in Florestan Fernandes' "Os Tupi e a Reacao Tribal a Conquista,"
Invfstigafdo etnoldgica no Brasil e outros cnsaios (Petropolis, 1976), 11-32.

982 John Monteiro
fragmented as the political makeup of indigenous Brazil, coastal Tupi

societies all shared common trends, which help explain the logic under-
lying the political responses and strategies adopted in the face of Euro-
pean expansion during the sixteenth century. Contemporary sources,
while allowing for brilliant reconstitutions of coastal Tupi social organi-
zation in ideal terms, also shed light on the dynamic that moved Tupi
societies over time and space. As we see in this section, the fragmentation
and regeneration of local units, the role of political and spiritual leaders,
and the critical importance of warfare, all formed central aspects of this
dynamic.
Early sources clearly identify what may be considered tribal agglomer-
ations, but the basic organ of social and political organization among the
coastal Tupi was the multifamily village. Several villages could be linked
by kinship or alliance networks, but there is no reason to believe that
these relations involved the development of larger political or territorial
units. In effect specific historical circumstances could expand or shrink
the association of local groups as the constantly shifting scenario of
alliances and animosities determined the nature and extent of multivillage
bonds. Sixteenth-century observers often failed to recognize this flexibil-
ity, describing groups of villages as if they formed a wider political whole.
For example, in reference to the Potiguar, "masters of over 400 leagues
of this coast," an anonymous Jesuit depicted them as "the largest and
most united of any [heathen] in Brazil."8 This Potiguar "unity," how-
ever, certainly was conditioned by their alliance with the French and
their common defense against the advance of the Portuguese conquest
along the coast of Paraiba. Furthermore, later on, several Potiguar groups
forged alliances with the Portuguese, and during the Luso-Dutch war
(1630-1654) they were to be found on both sides of the conflict.
Just as the multivillage networks proved mutable over time, individual
Tupi villages also did not constitute fixed, permanent settlements. Ac-
cording to sixteenth-century accounts, villages usually consisted of four
to eight multifamily residential lodges (malocas) and varied considerably
in size, ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand inhabitants. In
part at least, this variation resulted from the disparity of colonial obser-
vations, but it also reflected the recurrent pattern of village fragmentation
and regeneration: Every few years established villages were divided, dis-
Anonymous, "Sumario das armadas que se fizeram e guerras que se deram na conquista do Rio
Parafba," Revista do Instituto Histdrico e Geogrdfico BrasiUiro 36 (pt. 1) (1873), 8.

solved, and recreated at new sites. The widespread and frequent reference
to taperas, or abandoned settlements, in land documents of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, suggests the spatial dimensions of this process.
These moves were stimulated by various possible factors, including de-
cline in horticultural productivity, depletion of game reserves, internal
factional disputes, the emergence of a charismatic new leader, or the
death of a headman. Whatever the precise motive, the repeated creation
of new units of settlement constituted important events, involving the
reproduction of the principal bases of indigenous social and political
organization.
The original composition and proliferation of any given village was
associated intrinsically with the role of its founding headman. Conse-
quently, the community's identity - both historical and political - also
corresponded to the personal trajectory of its leader. The settlement of
independent villages occurred when an emergent political leader managed
to mobilize a significant following of relatives and friends. This following
was attracted essentially by one's fame as a warrior but also could be
consolidated through marriage strategies, including the selection of sons-
in-law (subject to brideservice obligations) and the adoption of several
wives. During the conquest these strategies proved critical in the early
development of Luso—Indian relations.
The headman's principal source of authority grew out of his capacity
to lead warriors against traditional enemies, but his responsibilities also
had much to do with the organization of social and material life. Accord-
ing to Gabriel Soares de Sousa, it was he who determined the relocation
of a faction or whole village and who chose a site for the new settlement.
He then would organize the construction and occupation of the malocas
and select the ideal location for the garden plot that was to provide the
community's subsistence. Significantly the headman not only labored
alongside his followers but also set the example: "When the principal
(headman) prepares the roga, with the assistance of his relatives and
followers, he is always the first to begin work."9
Thus, in spite of the headman's greater responsibility and prestige, he
remained essentially equal to his followers in the productive sphere. In
effect, among the coastal Tupi, political leadership did not correspond to
any sort of economic privilege or differentiated social status. To be sure
the authority of headmen always remained subject to the consent of his
' Scares de Sousa, Tratado Descritivo, 303.

984 John Monteiro
followers. In describing leadership in Tupinamba communities, Pero de

Magalhaes Gandavo commented: "These people do not have a King
among them, or any other sort of justice, except for a principal in each
village, who is like a captain, whom they obey by choice and not by
force." According to German gunner Hans Staden, "they also obey the
chiefs of the huts, in what they order; this is done without any compul-
sion or fear, but from goodwill only."10 The peculiar characteristics of
Tupi headmanship thus posed a considerable challenge to early observers.
The sixteenth-century literature projected three distinct levels of political
leadership, designating the term principal for each type of leader. The
term applied to maloca headmen, to village headmen, and finally to pan-
village leaders. This last category remained restricted to the context of
warfare, when several villages formed alliances in the face of a common
enemy. For example, on several occasions in the sixteenth century, Tup-
inikin headman Tibirica and Tupinamba headman Cunhambebe led
warriors from several villages to battle, each enjoying widely recognized
reputations as valiant and respected leaders.
But headmen also commanded other significant attributes. For one,
oratory skills figured in the making of a great leader among the Tupi.
The Jesuits, outstanding communicators themselves, frequently com-
mented on the effectiveness of native speakers. What caught their atten-
tion was not only the rhetorical methods but also the contents of the
frequent speeches. According to Fernao Cardim, every day before dawn,
the headman "preaches during half an hour, reminding [the villagers]
that they will work as did their ancestors, and distributes their time
among them, telling them what they are to do."" Father Manuel da
Nobrega, writing from Sao Vicente in 1553 and probably referring to the
Tupi or Guarani peoples of the interior, observed: "Every day before
dawn from a high place [the principal] sets out the day's tasks for each
household, and reminds them that they must live communally."12 These
suggestive comments, reproduced by many other early writers, indicate
perhaps the central nonmilitary attribute deposited among headmen. The
headmen acted as guardians of tradition, expressing and organizing the
10
Gandavo, Tratado da Terra, 124; Hans Staden, The captivity of Hans Stade of Hesse (London,
1874), 134.
" Fernao Cardim, S. J., Tratados da terra e gente do Brasil (Sao Paulo, 1978), 105.
12
Jesuit letters, cited frequently in this chapter, are from the following sources: Serafim Leite (ed.),
Monumenta Brasiliae, 5 vols. (Rome, 1956—1960); Alfredo do Valle Cabral (ed.), Cartas Jesuiticas,
3 vols., 2nd ed. (Sao Paulo and Belo Horizonte, 1988); H61io Viotti, S. J. (ed.), Carlos: Correspon-
dencia Ativa e Passiva (Sao Paulo, 1984).

tasks of daily life in terms of what had been set down in the past.
Tupinamba headman Japiacii, in submitting to French pressures to erad-
icate prisoner sacrifice and cannibalism, explained how tradition dictated
practice, when his will was vetoed in a meeting of elders:
I well know that this custom is bad and contrary to nature, and for this reason
I have sought many times to extinguish it. But all of us, elders, are much alike
and with identical powers; and if one of us presents a proposal, even if it is
approved by a majority of votes, all it takes is someone to declare that the
custom is ancient and that it is not right to modify that which we have learned
from our fathers.13
Although not in the same way, this role of guardian of tradition was
shared by shamans, or pajfc, who sometimes wielded political authority
as well. "Mediators between the spirits and the rest of the people,"
according to Yves d'Evreux, Tupi-Guarani shamans exercised multiple
functions, such as healing the sick, interpreting dreams, and warding off
the many outside threats to local society, including spirits and demons. 14
Their authority, respected by headmen and followers alike, derived pri-
marily from the esoteric knowledge they possessed, resulting from long
years of apprenticeship with experienced shamans. Their importance and
prestige was emphasized by Tupinamba headman Porta Grande of Bahia,
who informed Jesuit Pedro Rodrigues in 1551 that the pajes "gave them
all the good things, that is, their food."
The spiritual life of the coastal Tupi also was marked by the appear-
ance of wandering "prophets," known as caraibas. According to Jesuit
Manuel da N6brega, writing shortly after his arrival in Bahia, "From
time to time witches appear from distant lands, feigning holiness; and at
the time of their arrival, they order the Indians to clear the paths, and
are received with dances and festivities according to custom." Thus,
unlike the resident shamans, the caraibas were not permanent members
of the community, though they commanded considerable influence over
its residents. Early accounts frequently equated caraibas with shamans,
often describing them as paje guagu, or great shaman. But these figures
played quite a different role, preaching a prophetic message to all who
would listen. According to Nobrega:
13
Claude d'Abbeville, O. F. M., Histdria da Missao dos Padres Capuchinhos na Ilha do Maranhao
[1614] (Sao Paulo, 1975), 234.
14
Quoted in Helene Clastres, Terra Sent Mai. O Profetismo Tupi-Guarani (Sao Paulo, 1978), p. 35.

986 John Monteiro
Upon arriving . . . the sorcerer enters a dark hut and sets a human-shaped gourd
in the place best suited for his deceptions, and altering his voice to that of a
child . . . , tells [the villagers] that they should not work or go to the roca, that
the crops will grow untended and come to the houses by themselves, and there
will never be a lack of food; and the digging sticks will break the earth, arrows
will fly into the woods to hunt for their masters and to kill many enemies, and
will capture many to be eaten.
Gifted speakers, the caraibas supposedly persuaded followers to join
them on distant peregrinations in search of an earthly paradise, a "land
without evil," of abundance, eternal youth, and successful warfare and
cannibalism. In his excellent recent synthesis of Tupinamba history and
culture, anthropologist Carlos Fausto cogently identifies this concept on
both a horizontal (spatial) and vertical (temporal) plane. In spatial terms
this land was the object of collective migrations, which sought both
material and spiritual renewal. In temporal terms it was not only the land
of the ancestors but also the future destination of brave warriors who
killed and ate human flesh.15 Thus the quest for the "land without evil"
cannot be explained simply as a messianic reaction to conquest (as Alfred
Metraux and Maria Isaura Pereira de Queiroz have argued) or as a
politico-religious manifestation in radical opposition to traditional au-
thority (as Helene Clastres contends). In effect the prophet's message
addressed the basic elements that placed the coastal Tupi within an
historical dimension: spatial movements, headmanship, shamanism, and,
above all, warfare and prisoner sacrifice.
Indeed, the central importance of warfare among the coastal Tupi,
before and after the arrival of the Europeans, was not lost either on early
observers or later anthropologists; of all the aspects of indigenous society
they described, this activity occupied the most space. In his lengthy
description of indigenous social organization, Gabriel Soares de Sousa
summed up best the position of warfare in Tupi society : "As the
Tupinamba are very bellicose, all of their foundations are directed to-
wards making war on their enemies." In spite of differences in treatment
or degree of detail, the early accounts, taken together, pointed out three
significant features that played crucial roles in internecine and, subse-
quently, Euro-indigenous warfare: the vengeance motive, the practice of
prisoner sacrifice, and the complex configuration of intervillage alliances
and rivalries.
15
Carlos Fausto, "Fragmentos de hist6ria e cultura Tupinamba," in Manuela Carneiro da Cunha
(ed.). Histdria dos Indios no Brasil (Sao Paulo, 1992).

The ongoing conflicts between Tupi groups assumed gigantic propor-

tions by the mid-sixteenth century, though mainly because of their
colonial implications. During that period eyewitness accounts reported
battles involving literally hundreds and even thousands of warriors on
land and at sea. Pero Magalhaes Gandavo, in his description of the
Tupinamba, declared that "it seems strange to see two or three thousand
naked men on each side, howling and whistling noisily, shoot one an-
other with arrows." And Jose de Anchieta, while on his peace mission
among the Tamoio, reported that these Indians had prepared some 200
canoes for their war against the Portuguese, each capable of carrying
between twenty and thirty warriors, along with weapons and victuals.
Although the circumstances of the Tamoio conflict were exceptional,
the observations of Hans Staden, Jean de Lery, and the Jesuits, all of
whom lived for substantial periods among the Indians during this period,
do reveal significant aspects of Tupi warfare that must have existed before
the arrival of Portuguese and French allies and enemies. All accounts
agree that the principal, if not single, motivation for the constant fighting
between groups lay in the thirst for vengeance. "These people have the
feeling of vengeance firmly rooted in their hearts," wrote Lery of the
Tupinamba. Shortly after arriving in Brazil in 1549, Father Nobrega
observed that "they do not go to war in search of gain, because no one
has any more than that which he fishes and hunts, and the fruits that the
land yields, but only for hate and vengeance." Staden, for his part,
describing the raids carried out and attacks suffered by his captors, held
that revenge alone moved warriors to set out against their enemies. In
explaining "why one enemy eats the other," Staden reported several
provocations called out in the course of battle, including "To revenge
my friend's death on thee, am I here!"
In spite of the emphasis placed on vengeance by contemporaneous
observers, most modern authors have tended to dismiss revenge among
the Tupi as the single factor motivating warfare, one which supposedly
obscures other, more significant causes, ranging from territorial to ecolog-
ical to magico-religious. But the revenge motive in itself does explain a
lot. In defining traditional enemies and in reaffirming social roles within
local groups, vengeance, in particular, and warfare, more generally,
played important parts in situating Tupi peoples within a spatial and
temporal dimension. Jean de Lery, during his stay among the Tupinamba
of Rio de Janeiro, recorded an interesting speech, suggesting the signifi-
cance of warfare in preserving the collective memory of the local group.

988 John Monteiro
Tupinamba elders, according to Lery, constantly reminded their fellow

tribesmen of their traditional duties with respect to warfare, particularly
on the eve of battle:
"Our predecessors," they repeat one after another without interruption, "not
only fought valiantly but also subjugated, killed, and ate many enemies, thus
leaving us honored examples; how, then, can we remain in our houses like
cowards and weaklings? Will it be necessary, to add to our shame and confusion,
for our enemies to come get us in our homes, when in the past our nation was
so feared and respected that no one could resist us? Will our cowardice allow
the Margaia [Tememino] and the Pero-angaipa [heartless Portuguese], who are
worthless, invest against us?'
The orator would then answer his own exhortations, exclaiming, "No!
No! People of my nation, strong and valiant young men, this is not how
we should proceed; we must seek out our enemy even if we all die and
are devoured, but that our fathers be avenged!"16 Indigenous warfare, it
would appear, fueled by a universally perceived need to avenge past
injuries, thus provided an essential link between the past and future of
local groups.
Revenge itself was to be consummated in one of two traditional ways:
through the death of an enemy on the battlefield or through his capture
and subsequent ritual sacrifice. In either case the preferred mode of
execution was by smashing the enemy's skull with a heavy wooden club.
Enemies spared on the battlefield faced an often long captivity within
their captors' village, culminating in a great local feast, when captives
were killed and eaten. The taking of prisoners was directed singularly
toward these events, though colonial observers, for obvious reasons,
sought to equate captives to slaves. In effect these captives were neither
exploited nor treated as slaves, even though they performed certain pro-
ductive tasks. Lery noted that the Indians "treat their prisoner well and
satisfy his every need," feeding him and providing him with a female
companion, often one's sister or daughter. Although most captives were
male prisoners-of-war, many colonial observers registered the presence of
women and even child captives, evidently taken in raids of enemy vil-
lages. These captives also were submitted to a ritual sacrifice and were
eaten. The same fate awaited the offspring of the captives' companions.
The role of prisoner sacrifice and cannibalism among the Tupi has
stirred considerable controversy since the sixteenth century. Early chroni-
16
Jean de Lery, Viagem & Terra do Brasil (Sao Paulo and Belo Horizonte, 1980), 184.

clers showed great disgust with the cannibalistic ritual, while the Jesuits
and colonial authorities expended much energy in trying to abolish this
practice. Modern authors, for their part, in favoring ecological, demo-
graphic, or even nutritional factors, have tended to remove Tupi cannibal-
ism from its immediate cultural and historical contexts. An exaggerated fo-
cus on cannibalism, naturally abhorrent to Western sensibilities, in effect
has distorted the warfare—sacrifice complex. It is interesting to note, for ex-
ample, that while the Jesuits managed to persuade many groups to give up
eating their sacrifice victims, they failed miserably in their attempt to cur-
tail the ritual sacrifice. This suggests, once again, that the consummation of
vengeance, whether or not cannibalism was included, constituted the driv-
ing force behind indigenous warfare in coastal Brazil.17
The importance of the sacrifice rite also extended, significantly, to the
sphere of intervillage relations. The ritual feast marking the end of
captivity often served as an event that brought together allies and relatives
from diverse villages. According to Nobrega, in his letter to Coimbra
College in 1549, when the victims were to be killed, "all the inhabitants
of the district assemble to attend the festivities." Even when the influence
of the Jesuits was beginning to be felt among the Tupinikin of Sao
Vicente, one group refused to suspend a "great slaughter of slaves" in
spite of Jesuit pleas to stop the ceremony. "The Indians excused them-
selves by saying that this could not be halted because all the guests were
already assembled and all the preparations had been made with wines
[cauim] and other things," wrote Brother Pedro Correia, in 1554.
Warfare, the taking of captives, and prisoner sacrifice thus provided
one of the bases for relations between villages in precolonial Brazil.
Battles often joined warriors from various villages; in Sao Vicente, for
example, even in the presence of Jesuits, the Tupinikin would host
warriors from other local groups in preparation for coming battles against
the hated Tamoio. And the aftermath of victories or of defeats brought
together allies and relatives in host villages — in victory, to savor the
consummation of vengeance; in defeat, to rebuild raided homes or recon-
stitute shattered populations. The dynamics of intervillage relations,
whether expressed in terms of conflict or alliance, in turn provided one
of the keys to European success - or failure - in gaining control over the
native population.
17
Manuela Carneiro da Cunha and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, "Vinganfa e Temporalidade: Os
Tupinamba," Journal de la Societi des Americanistes 79 (1987), 191-208.

99° John Monteiro
THE PATH OF CONQUEST

Far from a uniform, swift process, the Portuguese conquest of the east
coast of South America involved a complex scenario of trade, alliance,
warfare, slavery, and conversion, as indigenous groups were drawn in at
different times and in different ways. During the first three decades of
the sixteenth century, the sporadic presence of European navigators along
the Brazilian coast had little impact on indigenous lifeways. European
interests remained restricted to periodic reconnaissance missions and to
the modest extraction of dye woods, as Portuguese and French traders
dispatched irregular shipments of wood and small numbers of Indian
slaves to the Old World. But the initial project that began with the
expedition of Martim Afonso de Sousa in 1530-1532 steadily gave way to
the more ambitious, if still tentative, design of populating the coast with
European colonists, which was to project Luso—Indian relations into an
entirely new direction.
Encouraged by the results of Sousa's voyage, which planted the first
permanent European colony on the southern coast at Sao Vicente, the
Portuguese crown sought to stimulate further settlement by dividing the
coast into fifteen parcels, called "captaincies," distributed among twelve
proprietors between 1534 and 1536. But the captaincy plan proved a
resounding failure in almost all cases. Although lax management and
insufficient investment certainly retarded their development, most cap-
taincies faltered when faced with mounting native resistance to the inva-
sion of their lands. To be sure, the land question proved thorny from
the start, in both its logistical and juridical dimensions. The Europeans
themselves recognized that the act of "discovery" did not confer territo-
rial rights, as influential Iberian jurists began to assert that the Indians
were the "natural lords and owners of the land." For their part the
Indians remained indifferent to papal briefs and international treaties
signed in faraway lands, challenging European settlement designs in a
rather more direct fashion. In the words of eighteenth-century historian
Sebastiao da Rocha Pita, it was necessary for the Portuguese "to gain
span by span that which had been granted in leagues."18
If, from the Portuguese standpoint, the Brazilian Indians began to
pose a threat to colonial development, they at the same time repre-
18
Sebastiao da Rocha Pita, Histiria da Amirica Portuguesa (Sao Paulo and Belo Horizonte, 1976),
60.

sented a solution for the same problem, constituting a considerable

source of labor for emerging European enterprises. From the start,
however, the recruitment of native workers proved problematical, be-
cause it remained subordinated to indigenous patterns of production,
exchange, alliance, and warfare. Over time increased colonial demands
began to erode these patterns, touching off a seemingly endless series
of conflicts throughout coastal Brazil. Exacerbated by the ravages of
epidemic disease, these conflicts led to a relatively rapid devastation of
coastal populations. The main dilemma for the Portuguese, then, lay
in the delicate balance between the exploitation and destruction of the
native population.
Not surprisingly the most successful early Portuguese settlements were
precisely those where significant alliances had been struck between Eu-
ropean adventurers and native headmen. Characteristically these alliances
were cemented by marriage strategies, as headmen "adopted" outsiders
as sons-in-law. One notable case occurred in the captaincy of Pernam-
buco, where the proprietor's brother-in-law Jeronimo de Albuquerque
married Tobajara headman Arcoverde's daughter. Although this Luso-
Tobajara alliance broke down later in the century, when a native head-
man was enslaved by an unscrupulous Portuguese, it explains why the
captaincy prospered from an early date. In the long run these unions
favored Portuguese designs, though native interests were served initially,
because European sons-in-law brought advantages, which proved ex-
tremely valuable in the context of indigenous warfare: firearms and the
prospect of a broader alliance. According to Rocha Pita, the Portuguese
castaway Diogo Alvares, known to the Tupinamba as Caramurii,
achieved great success among the Indians through his use of firearms.
Married to an influential local headman's daughter, widely respected for
his military feats, Caramurii became an indispensable agent in Luso-
Indian relations, especially during the establishment of royal government
in the Bay of All Saints after 1549.
Farther south, in Sao Vicente, another castaway named Joao Ramalho
played a similar role as cultural broker between the Tupinikin and the
Portuguese. Stranded on the coast long before the establishment of Sao
Vicente, Ramalho became integrated into the Tupinikin of the interior
plateau through his marriage to headman Tibirica's daughter Bartira. By
mid-century, when Jesuits and colonists began to settle the plateau,
Ramalho had accumulated considerable prestige among the Indians. Jes-
uit Manuel da N6brega, though at first disapproving of Ramalho's hea-

992- John Monteiro
thenish ways, admitted that his role was essential to the Portuguese,
"since he enjoys great fame and has many kin among the Indians."
Indeed, according to Ulrich Schmidl, a German traveler who visited
Ramalho's Luso-Tupinikin village in 1553, he "could assemble five thou-
sand warriors in a single day."19 Thus Ramalho clearly had appropriated
the attributes of a Tupinikin headman. Not only was he a respected
warrior and founder of a village; he also followed native traditions in
having "his daughters married to the principal men of the Captaincy,"
as Nobrega observed. Intermarriage, and more significantly the genera-
tion of mixed offspring, contributed in no small way to the early trans-
formation of native populations and political structures in the captaincies
where alliances prospered.
As European settlement advanced along the coast, these initial alli-
ances were put to a serious test. The growth of the Portuguese commu-
nities and the establishment of permanent sugar plantations created a
new demand for food supplies and labor, particularly in the 1540s. Tupi
swidden agriculture, though oriented almost exclusively toward local
subsistence needs, produced copious amounts of manioc, other assorted
roots, and maize. Several sixteenth-century sources reported that the Tupi
maintained supplies within their villages, but these surpluses usually were
limited to short-term storage strategies related to military expeditions.
Occasionally headmen showered their European neighbors or visitors
with plentiful stores of manioc or maize, but to the dismay of the
colonists, the supply of foodstuffs came only sporadically, even if the
Europeans offered iron tools and other imported items in exchange. In
effect barter failed to develop more fully because each party attached
radically different meanings to it. The supply of foodstuffs by the Indians
was not - as Alexander Marchant and subsequent authors have asserted -
simply an economic response to a market situation. Rather, both the
acquisition and supply of goods had more to do with their symbolic
value than their commercial significance. For example, in 1552, the Jesuit
Antonio Pires thus explained the offer of foodstuffs by a Tobajara head-
man in Pernambuco: "He hopes that we supply him with much life and
health and provisions as his sorcerers have promised." In short, cordial
relations with Tupi headmen could reap immediate positive benefits,
though to a limited extent. Eager to acquire iron tools and especially
firearms, in exchange headmen organized work crews (mutiroes) who were
" Ulrico Schmidl, Relato de la conquista del Rio de la Plata y Paraguay (Madrid, 1986), 106.

used by the colonists to cut and drag brazilwood logs, or to clear forested
areas to make subsistence rogas (garden plots).20
The food problem found a partial solution in alliance relations, but
the quest for permanent, plantation labor posed quite a different prob-
lem, with far-reaching consequences for native societies. While some of
the larger enterprises, such as that of the Flemish Schetz family in Sao
Vicente, sought to develop a West African slave labor force from an early
date, most sixteenth-century sugar planters turned exclusively to the local
Indian population. Indeed, at least until the end of the century, the
imperatives of sugar and slavery strongly marked the shape and direction
that relations between colonists and Indians were to take along the coast.
Once again alliance strategies proved critical: The Portuguese soon per-
ceived that the permanent state of war between Tupi groups offered a
potentially unlimited source of Indian captives. The Indians, for their
part, took on Portuguese and French allies with an initial enthusiasm,
because they introduced new weapons and methods and fit comfortably
within the logic of Tupi warfare. However, to their dismay, the new
allies' insatiable appetite for captives - though not in the traditional sense
- threatened to undermine the main objective of indigenous warfare:
ritual prisoner sacrifice.
But war captives were not transformed into chattel slaves so easily.
The Europeans found resistance to the sale of slaves not only among
their captors but also among the captives themselves. For example, in
1551, when the Jesuit Azpilcueta Navarro offered to purchase a Tupi-
namba war prisoner about to be sacrificed, he was surprised to learn that
the Indian refused to be sold, "because he would rather keep his honor
in meeting such a death as a valiant soldier." And the Calvinist Jean de
Lery, writing about the Tupinamba during the French occupation of Rio
de Janeiro, expressed the internal conflicts experienced by the Indians in
facing changing patterns of warfare and sacrifice, in his account of French
attempts to buy Maracaja (Tememino) captives recently taken in battle:
In spite of our efforts, our interpreters succeeded in purchasing only a few of

the prisoners. I noticed that this was not to the contentment of the captors
when I bought a woman and her two year-old son, who cost me three francs in
merchandise. The vendor told me: "I do not know what will happen in the
future, for ever since Pai Cola [Nicholas Villegaignon] arrived here we have not
eaten even half of our prisoners."21
20 21
Alexander Marchant, From barter to slavery (Baltimore, 1942). Lery, Viagem, 190-911.

994 John Monteiro
Indeed, the Europeans found it difficult to undercut the social and

ritual significance of captivity and cannibalism. Often, Portuguese partic-
ipants themselves failed to collaborate; describing the Paraguacii War in
1559, Father Nobrega remarked that certain Portuguese captains were
behaving in indigenous fashion, complete with the ritual sacrifice of
captives and the adoption of the victims' names. Allied Tupi headmen,
pressured by elders, shamans, and other tribesmen to preserve traditions,
also came into conflict with Portuguese authorities and Jesuits when
resisting colonial orders to cease these practices. Even Joao Ramalho's
father-in-law Tibirica, of the Sao Vicente Tupinikin, considered by the
Jesuits as an exemplary case of conversion, at one point shocked and
disgusted Brother Anchieta when he insisted on slaying a Guaiana war
captive "in the heathenish fashion." Perhaps the most disconcerting
aspect of the incident — from the Jesuit point of view — was the enthusi-
astic approval manifested by all the Indians present, "even the catechu-
mens, since this was exactly what they wanted, shouting as one that he
should kill."
Although the coastal Tupi clung dearly to the ritual practices of
sacrifice and cannibalism, the increased participation of Europeans in the
assaults on traditional enemies began to alter the form and content of
indigenous warfare. Without the Europeans, raiding parties would travel
hundreds of miles to bring back a precious few captives, while mid-
century battles involved far greater numbers of warriors, producing scores
and even hundreds of captives. Over time indigenous warfare gradually
assumed the character ofsaltos, or slave raids. By the end of the sixteenth
and beginning of the seventeenth century, colonial writers began to assert
that the allies eagerly waged battles against their enemies only to produce
captives for sale to the whites. But the war for slaves in fact had begun
in the 1540s, as the Portuguese managed to incite their allies to intensify
ongoing conflicts with traditional rivals. With the escalation of hostilities,
enemy groups sought to offset these alliances with alternative strategies
of their own: Tupinamba groups in Rio de Janeiro and Itamaraca formed
alliances with the French, while others articulated pan-village military
forces, often referred to as "confederations."
Certainly the most important of these emerged in southeastern Brazil,
where Tupinamba groups along the coast from Cabo Frio to Sao Vicente
formed a powerful resistance movement, calling themselves the Tamoio,
a Tupi term for grandparent or ancestor. According to Father Manuel da

Nobrega, writing in 1557, the origins of the Tamoio War followed a

common pattern in the context of Indian - white conflicts: the frequent
Portuguese and Tupinikin raids on Tupinamba villages, the sack and
destruction of rogas, and the taking of Indian slaves. Active from the late
1540s to the mid-i56os, the movement demonstrated the presence of
powerful Indian resistance even in the most successful colonies. More
importantly, perhaps, it showed clearly that Indian hostility was directly
proportional to European provocation.
By the 1550s the struggle for slaves threw practically the entire Brazilian
coast into intense conflicts involving not only traditional rivals but also
Portuguese and French military forces as well. The wars were tremen-
dously costly to native populations, in terms of lives lost, captives taken,
and homelands destroyed. To a certain degree these conflicts reflected
important changes in the structure of indigenous warfare that were accel-
erated during this period. But even within this context of repeated and
decisive defeats, warfare remained rooted in the logic of precolonial
relations and rivalries. The role played by the Jesuits of Sao Paulo in the
"pacification" of the Tamoio illustrates some of the apparent contradic-
tions that indigenous warfare posed to the Europeans. The Jesuits did
manage to reach an agreement with certain Tamoio groups, suspending
hostilities against the Portuguese. But it was not a peace agreement, as
Brazilian historiography conventionally has held; according to Anchieta's
account, the Tupinamba were willing to negotiate precisely because of
the changing alliance situation of the war. Aware of the fact that certain
Tupinikin factions had rebelled against their Portuguese allies near Sao
Paulo in 1562, the Tupinamba saw an opportunity to form an alliance
with the Portuguese against their traditional rivals. Indeed, Anchieta
admitted that "the principal reason that has moved them to want this
peace was not their fear of the Christians, but their great desire to make
war against their Tupi enemies, who until now were our friends, and
recently rebelled against us." In spite of the persistence of this internal
dynamic, however by mid-century it was clear that indigenous warfare
had become subordinated to the pressures and demands of a nascent
colonialism. As the Indians now began to resist European advances more
aggressively, colonial reprisals, tied to an increasingly repressive Indian
policy, became all the more violent. Facing this critical challenge, the
Portuguese crown itself became more intimately involved in the Indian
question.

996 John Monteiro
INDIAN LAND AND LABOR IN A RAPIDLY CHANGING

COLONIAL WORLD
At mid-century Luso-Indian relations along the Brazilian coast began to
enter a critical phase. Two decisive new actors were at the center of this
shift, both arriving in the 1549 fleet: royal government and the first Jesuit
missionaries. Shortly after arriving at the Bay of All Saints, Governor-
general Tome de Sousa and his small retinue of royal bureaucrats erected
the new capital at Salvador, establishing the roots of a centralized govern-
ment that was to tie together the loosely articulated captaincy system.
Although hereditary proprietors maintained many of their original privi-
leges, the crucial questions of defense and labor appropriation became
the immediate concerns of royal authorities. Tome de Sousa's standing
orders {regimento), issued by King Joao III, in fact outlined the first
formal statement of Portuguese Indian policy, inaugurating a long series
of legislative acts that sought to protect "peaceful" Indians but to enslave
or destroy those who refused to submit to European control. Thus the
regimento openly recognized that native resistance in most captaincies was
a direct result of slaving activities and ordered the governor to curtail
these abuses in protection of oppressed indigenous groups. At the same
time, it bared the other edge of the sword in recommending that he
destroy enemy villages, punishing, killing, and enslaving their inhabitants
as necessary to subdue refractory natives.
The new policy had an immediate impact on indigenous warfare, with
disastrous effects on native populations. While the struggle for slaves
continued to fuel conflicts at the local level, Portuguese military activities
during the second half of the century also expressed the explicit goal of
political domination. The first two governors remained concerned mainly
with the consolidation of Portuguese settlement in the Salvador area, but
during Mem de Sa's long tenure (1558-1572) a brutal policy of armed
conquest spread up and down the coast. In 1558—1559, though promoting
the formation of mission villages with "peaceful" Indians, he conducted
a bloody campaign against the remaining independent Tupinamba and
Tupina groups near the Bay of All Saints and particularly along the
Paraguacii River, where he supposedly burned 160 villages.22 In 1559 he
22
The reference to 160 villages appears in the anonymous account (probably by Jose de Anchieta),
"Informacao do Brasil e de suas capitanias," Revista do Instituto Histdrico e Geogrdfico BrasiUiro 6
(1844); according to Frei Vicente do Salvador, Histdria do Brasil, written in 1627, 70 villages were
destroyed.

led a powerful contingent of Tupinamba allies against the Tupinikin of

Ilheus and Espirito Santo, who had raised arms against Portuguese slavers
and sugar planters, sacking and burning plantations. According to a Jesuit
chronicle, 300 villages were burned near Ilheus, leaving the beaches
"covered with bodies." The campaign in Espirito Santo was slightly less
successful, because native resistance was strengthened by the alliance
between Tupinikin and Waitaka factions, but the captaincy was "paci-
fied" (a term that was to stay with Brazilian Indian policy well into the
twentieth century) by the early 1560s.
Certainly the most important of Mem de Sa's initiatives was the
conquest of Rio de Janeiro, which also illustrates the considerable trans-
formations in indigenous warfare during this period. As we have seen,
the Tamoio of the southern coast developed a powerful resistance move-
ment in the 1540s and 1550s, which drew together many local groups
under the military coordination of Cunhambebe and other influential
headmen. Battles reached new proportions: Contemporary observers de-
scribed pitched battles involving hundreds of warriors and canoe fleets
with as many as 180 canoes. Perhaps more significantly, although pris-
oners continued to be sacrificed and eaten, many confrontations degen-
erated into wholesale slaughters, which struck at the very logic of Tupi
warfare. If at first carried out within the context of traditional vendettas
between Tupinamba, Tupinikin, and Tememino factions, the so-called
Tamoio War gained further colonial overtones with the involvement of
the French. In 1555, departing from the prior policy of maintaining
strictly trade relations, a French Calvinist adventurer named Nicholas
Durand de Villegaignon established the colony of Antarctic France on
an island in Guanabara Bay, which provided a significant military boost
to the Tamoio, especially in terms of European weaponry. The Portu-
guese, already at war with the Tamoio, now had all the more reason to
destroy them. After a long battle with many losses on both sides, Mem
de Sa's forces managed to storm Villegaignon's fort in 1560, but it took
several more years of fighting, Jesuit diplomacy, and epidemic crises
before the French were expelled and the Tamoio defeated. By 1567
Guanabara Bay was "restored" to Portuguese control and the city of Rio
de Janeiro established, while the surviving Tamoio either retreated to the
interior or submitted to the conquerors.
While the military conquest made decisive progress during this period,
the other side of Portugal's double-edged Indian policy also advanced
through the energetic efforts of the Jesuits. Few in number, the first

998 John Monteiro
Jesuits dedicated themselves to itinerant missionary activities among the

many Tupi villages near the principal Portuguese settlements. By the late
1550s, with the active support of the governor, they began to establish
mission villages of their own, in many cases concentrating several separate
villages into one, while also sheltering the victims of colonial wars. The
mission villages, or aldeias, sought to offer a peaceful, alternative solution
to the problems of domination and labor recruitment, thus consciously
subscribing to the collective colonial ideal of development. However, for
a number of reasons, this project failed to produce its desired results, in
part because of native resistance but mainly because it created a bitter
relationship between Jesuits and private colonists, each vying for the
control of the Indian population.
Amidst the theological and economic controversies that grew out of
the struggle over Indian labor, the Jesuits began to organize their system
of mission villages in several captaincies. The aldeias substituted for the
rapidly disappearing independent Indian villages near the Portuguese
settlements, transferring the control of coastal Indian land and labor into
European hands. In Bahia, where Jesuit activities were most intense, at
least twelve aldeias were created in the late 1550s, concentrating over
40,000 Indians in the immediate area of Salvador by the early 1560s. The
early figures indeed were promising; writing to the crown in 1560, Gov-
ernor Mem de Sa reported that 437 Indians had been baptized in a single
day at the aldeia of Espirito Santo, near Salvador. This early success was
repeated in other captaincies, particularly in Espirito Santo and Sao
Vicente, where several villages were established among the local Tupini-
kin.
From the outset the crown was anxious to support the Jesuit enter-
prise, seeing this as a desirable means of reconciling the freedom of the
Indians with the more general goal of developing the colony. To be sure,
a healthy aldeia system was intended to serve not only Jesuit and crown
interests but also those of the settlers themselves. From the royal point
of view, the establishment of aldeias seemed a sensible way of protecting
the nascent sugar economy from the external threat of European interlop-
ers, as well as the internal threat of attacks by Tapuias and, later, by
runaway African slaves. In this sense the aldeias could serve as buffers
between the plantation zones and the unsettled interior, as well as provid-
ing a military force that could be mobilized quickly. Perhaps most
importantly, though, the sustained growth of the aldeias was to propor-
tion a reserve of free labor for colonial enterprises.

For their part, in the early years at least, private colonists also lent
support to the aldeia plan, hoping that it would solve some of the
practical obstacles holding back agricultural development. For instance,
these reconstituted indigenous communities, often much larger than
traditional Indian villages, offered a seemingly reliable and cheap alter-
native to slavery, through a system of contract labor. At the same time,
the formation of aldeias redefined the land question by confining indige-
nous populations to spaces determined by colonial interests. New villages
received extensive land grants, conveniently located on the outskirts of
zones most suited to sugar production, which imposed a radical transfor-
mation in the definition of territorial and property rights. The legal
instrument conferring title to the villages was the sesmaria, which made
it clear from the start that Indian lands were to have special characteris-
tics. Unlike the sesmarias distributed among private individuals, these
lands were designated as collective property belonging to the Indians of
the village, which could not be alienated under any circumstances and
which was to be exploited exclusively by the aldeia residents.
Another ostensible advantage of this new form of land tenure lay in
the prospect of foodstuff production, destined to support not only the
Indians but the Luso-Brazilian population as well. Stuart Schwartz, in his
book on sugar plantations in Bahia, suggests that part of the Jesuit
strategy was to mold an independent indigenous peasantry out of the
detribalized peoples thrown together in the aldeias.25 But this paper
peasantry never materialized because the aldeia residents rarely produced
enough to maintain themselves, let alone supply the colonial economy.
In short, the aldeia scheme failed to produce the structures necessary to
sustain and reproduce a reserve labor force sufficiently large to meet
settler demands, in part because native response once again frustrated
colonial expectations.
The aldeias, though designed to protect the declining Indian popula-
tion and at the same time make the Indians useful if dependent subjects,
in effect hastened the disintegration of indigenous societies. Perhaps the
most significant disruptive factor was disease, which also served as an
important ally to the Europeans on the battlefield. By concentrating the
native population — some individual aldeias had over 5,000 residents —
and restricting its customary mobility, the Jesuits unwittingly contributed
to the conditions favoring the spread of epidemics. Other Jesuit innova-
23
Schwartz, Sugar plantations in the formation of Brazilian society (Cambridge, 1985), 41—43.

iooo John Monteiro
tions, as Luis Felipe Baeta Neves has pointed out, such as the use of
clothing and the burial of contaminated persons within the villages, also
contributed to the spread of disease.24 To make matters worse, with
persistently high mortality rates, the aldeias only survived through their
constant replenishment with new groups of previously uncontacted In-
dians. Although consistent with the Jesuit strategy of reducing members
of varied societies to a single ideal Christian type, the constant influx of
new catechumens had the more serious effect of aggravating the epide-
miological situation, because recently contacted peoples were far more
susceptible to the imported diseases.
Disease struck all segments of the Indian population, including inde-
pendent villages in the interior, and it hit the young and unstable aldeias
especially hard. Isolated outbreaks already had been registered, but the
first large smallpox epidemic — possibly introduced by African slaves who
participated in the campaigns against the Tupinikin — raged along the
east coast in 1559, carrying off over 600 Indian slaves in Espirito Santo
alone. By 1562 the disease was claiming victims from Sao Vicente to
Pernambuco. The following year measles broke out in the wake of the
smallpox epidemic, certainly intensified by the arrival of new Indian
slaves taken in the Caete campaigns. In Bahia the impact of these epi-
demics was sudden and powerful: According to contemporary Jesuit
accounts, 30,000 Indians and Africans perished in the brief interval of 3
months. Modern authors have estimated that between one-fourth and
three-fifths of the aldeia population perished. Over a longer period,
between 1560 and 1580, the total population of the Bahia aldeias was
diminished from over 40,000 to less than 10,000 residents. This gloomy
balance was pronounced by the Jesuit Anchieta in the early 1580s: "The
people that have been wasted in Bahia over the last twenty years is
something incredible; because no one considered that so many people
could ever be expended, especially in so short a time."
Under these adverse conditions the Jesuits meticulously sought to
dismantle some of the fundamental elements of indigenous social orga-
nization, substituting these elements with radically different patterns. For
example, the creation of fixed, permanent villages with restricted land
rights stood in stark contrast with the irregular patterns of fragmentation
24
Luis Felipe Baeta Neves, O combate dos SoUados de Cristo na Terra dos Papagaios (Rio de Janeiro,
1978).

Invaded Societies: i6th-Century Coastal Brazil IOOI
and regeneration, which characterized precolonial village formation. The

spatial orientation of the aldeias, based on European models featuring a
church and central plaza, also departed somewhat from the organization
of non-Christian Indian villages. The replacement of extended-family
living units with nuclear households and the prohibition of polygamy
affected some groups greatly, while the suppression of most ceremonial
activities and their substitution with Christian rituals sought to restruc-
ture the basic contours of Indian existence. Finally, and perhaps most
significantly, the Jesuits attempted to inculcate a totally new concept of
time and work discipline into their Indian subordinates, where a new
sexual division of labor and a rigid schedule of productive activities
clashed with preconquest patterns.
The Jesuit program centered its fire primarily on three areas: the
conversion of the headmen, the indoctrination of youths, and the elimi-
nation of the shamans, or pajis. At each step, however, they met varying
degrees of resistance. The Jesuits, along with other Europeans, counted
naively on the blind acceptance of Christianity by their Brazilian flock,
and their accounts are filled with reports of mass baptisms, supposed
miracles, and dramatic professions of faith by Indian leaders. But their
teachings were not always heeded uniformly, and even the conversion of
a local leader did not guarantee that the tribesmen would follow. For
example, referring to one of the first native villages approached by the
Jesuits in Bahia in 1549, Father Nobrega reported the case of a headman
who came to be ostracized by all of his relatives because of his adherence
to Christianity and his collaboration with the Jesuits. Another exemplary
collaborator was Garcia de Sa, headman in Sao Paulo aldeia near Salva-
dor, who adapted traditional forms to the new rhetoric. According to
Nobrega this leader would amble throughout the village before dawn, as
in precolonial times, only the content of his speech was diametrically
opposed to tradition: Instead of urging his tribesmen to fight as valiant
warriors and eat human flesh, he attempted to persuade them to "become
Christians and leave behind the customs of the past." Nobrega detected
a sure sign that customs indeed were changing in that Garcia had con-
vinced his followers to sell all their feather adornments and with the
proceeds buy Western garments. However, when the power of speech
failed to persuade the Indians to change their ways, the Jesuits were not
averse to adopting disciplinary measures, following Mem de Sa's policy
of harsh law enforcement. Indigenous bailiffs were appointed in each

1002 John Monteiro
village, and stocks were erected for exemplary punishment of relapsed

converts who engaged in prohibited acts, such as fornication, cannibal-
ism, and drunkenness.
The first Jesuits also dedicated much energy to the instruction of
Indian youths, in part because of the resistance that older generations
offered, but also because of the persistence of traditional forms of instruc-
tion that they sought to undermine. "Those who are already adults,"
wrote Anchieta in 1560, "and who follow the evil customs of their parents
most naturally, cover their ears so as not to hear the healthy word and
become converted to the true cult of God." Initially the fathers found it
difficult to make their efforts compatible with the daily obligations facing
the boys of the village. Referring to the aldeia of Sao Joao near Salvador,
N6brega reported that he was able to teach the boys a curriculum of
religion, literacy, and music only 3 or 4 hours each afternoon, because
the students first had to carry out other obligations, such as hunting and
fishing. After the formal school sessions, the Jesuits would assemble all
the members of the aldeia for mass, which included hymns executed by
a boy's choir. Finally, to round out activities, they would ring the church
bell at a determined hour in the middle of the night, when the boys
would relay the day's teachings to their elders. But even these efforts
often proved short-lived, according to Anchieta; initial success with
young boys often was undone when they reached adolescence, when they
would take up the customs of their elders.
Pajh, or shamans, constituted perhaps the last line of resistance to
European domination, particularly with respect to the work of the Jesu-
its. The Jesuits were quick to launch an all-out offensive against the
"sorcerers" because the continued presence and charismatic influence of
the pajh among the Indians threatened to undermine the conversion
efforts of the Padres. In 1557 Anchieta observed that the work of the
Jesuits in Sao Paulo was being rivaled by a shaman who was attracting
many followers, who "venerate him as a Saint" and who intended to
destroy the Christian Church. Anchieta offered no further information
on this specific case, but other Jesuits mentioned the emergence of
santidade (holiness or saintliness) cults, evidently responses to the conver-
sion efforts of the priests. One such movement attained great prestige in
the backlands of Bahia later in the century.
Within the specific context of the native villages, Father Nobrega
reported in 1549 diat the pajis were telling the Indians that the baptismal
water was the cause of the diseases that were beginning to afflict the

villages at that time. Later, in another village near Salvador, sick children
were hidden from the Jesuits, "because the sorcerers say that we kill them
through baptism." Curiously this association of epidemic disease with
the work of the Jesuits extended beyond the actions of pajes. Referring to
a village near Salvador in 1559, Brother Antonio de Sa remarked that in
his aldeia "there is nothing on our part that will move the old women to
accept baptism, because they are certain that baptism will bring them
death." This fear was not totally unfounded in that the Jesuits themselves
tended to reserve baptism to Indians on their deathbeds. Several of the
padres harbored suspicions as to the efficacy of baptism, having witnessed
countless examples of Indians reverting to their decidedly non-Christian
practices after conversion. Father Afonso Bras, working among the Tup-
inikin and Tememino in Porto Seguro and Espirito Santo, reported in
1551: "I dare not baptize the heathen here so readily, unless they plead
for it repeatedly, because I am wary of their inconstancy and lack of
firmness, except in the case of when they are at the point of death."
In short, to be truly effective, it was not enough simply to discredit
the pajes; the Jesuits also would have to appropriate for themselves the
traditional role of charismatic spiritual leader. Indeed, in their mission
activities and on their visits to Indian villages, the Jesuits adopted prac-
tices thought to be effective because they emulated precolonial practices.
It was common, for example, for Jesuits to preach before sunup, as was
the practice of headmen or pajes who harangued their fellow tribesmen.
Anchieta, in spreading the gospel among Tupinamba villages along the
coast of Sao Vicente in 1565, expressed his message in a fashion closely
modeled on the rhetoric of the charismatic leaders whom he so despised.
Speaking "in a loud voice throughout their houses, as is their custom,"
Anchieta preached that "we wanted to remain among them and teach
them about God, so that He could give them abundant crops, health
and victory against their enemies and other such things." Perhaps with
this in mind, the Jesuits soon perceived baptism, with its apparently
magical implications for the Indians, to be an effective method of sub-
verting certain rituals, especially the cannibalistic rite. For example, when
visiting a Tupinikin village in 1554, the Jesuits Nobrega and Pedro Cor-
reia attempted to intercede on behalf of prospective sacrifice victims. The
Tupinikin villagers refused to allow the baptism of the victims, "saying
that if they killed them after having been baptized, all those who had
killed and eaten that flesh also would die." And in 1560 the Indians of a
village near Sao Paulo killed two captives, one a small boy aged two or

1004 John Monteiro
three and the other a youth of fifteen, but declined to eat them as
planned because Father Luis da Gra had baptized them first. Finding it
difficult to eliminate prisoner sacrifice altogether, Anchieta recognized
the limits of Jesuit success when he remarked in 1554 that "among such
a multitude of infidels, a few of our flock at least have abstained from
eating their fellow man."
Day-to-day resistance certainly wore down the Jesuits' patience, but
the aldeia project also was jeopardized by more radical actions. In Bahia
the aldeia plan met considerable native opposition from the start. Some
local groups refused to submit to colonial rule, as in the case of Chief
Cururupeba, who openly defied the governor's prohibition of cannibal-
ism. Others, once converted and settled in mission villages, soon after
abandoned their new ways. In 1557, in the Rio Vermelho village, the
Indians rebelled against the Jesuits, who had pressured their headman to
abandon polygamy. But the most common form of resistance was flight
from the aldeias. According to Nobrega, "many flee the subjection of our
doctrine and live like their ancestors, eating human flesh as before." In
1560, during a religious procession, many of the residents of the Sao Joao
aldeia followed headman Mirangoaba into the interior. Mirangoaba
sported a long record of insubordination, though the main reason for his
abandoning the aldeia emanated from a factional dispute that had devel-
oped within the settlement. Indeed, while the Jesuits were quick to
attribute such actions to the Indians' inconstancy, this served conven-
iently to mask problems that they themselves had created.
In short, unable to meet the labor needs of the settlers and frustrated
by their incapacity to transform the recalcitrant tribal Indians into loyal
Catholic subjects, the Jesuits and their aldeia program quickly lost
ground to alternative forms of labor recruitment and political control.
To be sure, along with the devastating effects of epidemic disease, the
cultural modifications imposed by the Jesuits served mainly to hasten the
disintegration of native societies. Instead of producing Christian Indians
able and willing to work for the development of the colony, the aldeia
system succeeded only in creating marginal communities of sickly, mo-
rose, and unproductive residents, hardly able to provide for their own
survival. It was within this context, then, that the colonists sought in-
creasingly to take the labor question into their own hands.
Dissatisfied with the results of the aldeia experiment, and stimulated
by the repeated demographic crises that punctuated the second half of
the sixteenth century, both private settlers and enterprising colonial au-

thorities intensified the search for new sources of slave labor. As we have
seen, the tenure of Governor Mem de Sa marked a critical turning point
in Luso-Indian relations. Although Mem de Sa openly supported the
Jesuits and their missions — his own Sergipe plantation near Salvador
eventually passed to them in a bequest from his daughter — the need to
pacify the coastal regions surrounding the Portuguese settlements and the
attendant development of the sugar industry inevitably resulted in a series
of wars of conquest, which in turn were to produce a rich booty in
Indian captives. Indeed, while the king's counselors discussed the ethics
of "Just War" from a moral and theological perspective, Mem de Sa and
his immediate successors adopted a more practical stance, organizing
powerful military columns that were to squash Tupi resistance in Rio de
Janeiro, Bahia, Pernambuco, Sergipe, and Paraiba.
Mem de Si's willingness to resolve the defense and slavery issues in
single strokes became evident in 1562, with the prosecution of a "Just
War" against the Caete, who 6 years earlier had slain and devoured
Brazil's first bishop. In his proclamation, the governor authorized the
enslavement of all Caete, which evidently pleased the colonists of Bahia,
who faced their first serious labor crisis as a result of the great smallpox
epidemic that raged along the coast. But not all Caete were enemies;
some, in fact, lived in Jesuit missions, while others traded peacefully with
the Portuguese. Nonetheless the colonists and their Tupinamba allies
seized the opportunity with relish, attacking and enslaving any Caete to
be found, including those living in the Jesuit villages. And when the
declared enemy proved insufficient, the slavers launched attacks against
other Tupi groups, claiming that they were Caete. According to the
Jesuit Anchieta, within a few months over 50,000 captives were taken in
the war, but only 10,000 lived on to serve as slaves in the Salvador area,
the others falling victim either to ruthless massacres or uncompromising
disease.
The Caete case set a dangerous precedent, which subsequently was
incorporated into Portuguese legal codes dealing with the Indian ques-
tion. Evidently preoccupied with the indiscriminate and illegal enslave-
ment of native peoples, the Portuguese crown issued its first major
legislative statement on the Indian question with the Law of 20 March
1570. This law specifically sought to regulate both Indian slavery and
freedom. The new statute designated the legitimate means of acquiring
Indian captives, restricting these to "Just Wars" duly authorized by the
king or governor, and to the ransom (resgate) of captives destined to

1006 John Monteiro
perish in cannibalistic rituals — the so-called indios da corda, or bound

Indians. All other Indians captured unjustly were declared free. This code
may have had little effect on the actual relations between colonists and
Indians - illegal slaving expeditions were difficult to repress in practice -
but it did reflect the conciliatory tone adopted by an ambivalent crown
caught between Jesuit and settler interests. The posture in favor of the
freedom of the Indians most likely came from pressures by the Jesuits
Luis da Gra and Jose de Anchieta, who sat on a commission organized
by the crown in 1566 to discuss the Indian question. On the other hand,
the "Just War" clause, while falling within the limits accepted by the
Jesuits, also answered settler demands because they saw a need for new
supplies of slaves to replace those who perished in the frequent epidemics.
Even had the settlers observed crown regulations strictly, the conces-
sion of rights to the enslavement of certain groups through "Just Wars"
would not have resolved the labor problem even as a supplementary
source. As the century wore on, with the defeat of Tupi groups surround-
ing the Portuguese settlements, many of the remaining coastal groups
who qualified as indomitable and subject to "Just Wars" were Tapuia;
the Law of 1570 explicitly singled out the Aimore, a denomination that
included various Ge peoples who were particularly resistant to Portuguese
expansion in eastern Brazil. The colonists were interested mainly in Tupi
labor, though, and with the collusion of royal officials would invent
flimsy pretexts for the prosecution of wars against Tupi peoples, as in the
Caete case of 1562. Part of the problem lay in the difficulties posed by
the very different pattern of Ge warfare: Rather than the intricate web of
alliances and constant movement of captives, the frequent, effective raids
by Ge groups made them at the same time formidable adversaries and
objects of Portuguese reprisals. But the main Portuguese objection re-
sided elsewhere. Referring to the Ge-speaking Guaiana of Sao Paulo,
Gabriel Soares de Sousa summed up a consensus view on the labor issue:
"Anyone who buys a Guaiana slave expects no service from him, because
these people are lazy by nature and do not know how to work."25
The military defeat of a significant number of coastal peoples also
opened the way for the rapid expansion of the sugar industry during the
final quarter of the sixteenth century. Between 1570 and 1600 the number
of engenhos, or large mills, on the Brazilian coast grew threefold: the
northeastern captaincies alone, with 24 mills in 1570, boasted 100 engen-
25
Soares de Sousa, Tratado Descritivo, 115.

hos 30 years later. Many planters tied their fortunes to the growing supply
of African slaves, but most counted on the increased flow of Indian labor
to guarantee the production and local transport of the sugar crop. Stuart
Schwartz, in his pioneer analysis of the gradual shift to African labor on
Bahian plantations between 1570 and 1620, has documented the persis-
tence and complexity of Indian labor arrangements — particularly slavery
- during this period.26 Although few studies exist for the other captain-
cies, it now seems clear that not only the origins but also the early
development of the colonial sugar economy were closely tied to the
expansion of Indian slavery. In addition subsidiary economic activities,
notably foodstuff production and distribution, also depended heavily on
the supply and exploitation of forced native labor.
The forced relocation of indigenous societies, often involving great
distances, contributed to the depopulation of vast stretches of coast and
hinterland alike. These movements also aggravated the epidemiological
problem in zones of European settlement, because the introduction of
large numbers of captives with little or no immunity to a new disease
environment kept mortality rates always at high levels. Writing in 1583
Anchieta produced a grim picture of the fate of 20,000 captives taken in
the Aribo backlands 6 years earlier, claiming that only 2,000 had sur-
vived: "Go now to the mills and plantations of Bahia and you will find
them filled with Guinea blacks and very few native blacks, and if you ask
what happened to so many people, they will tell you they have perished."
The deadly epidemics in turn stimulated new slaving expeditions to
increasingly distant lands, in a destructive cycle that persisted until Indian
slavery no longer remained a viable economic proposition. This cycle
played out on the sugar-growing coast sometime during the first half of
the seventeenth century, but it lasted well into the eighteenth century in
other areas, particularly the colonies of Sao Paulo, Goias, Mato Grosso,
Maranhao, Para, and Rio Negro.
Part of the demand was filled through the formal prosecution of "Just
Wars." Thousands of Tupinamba captives were marched to Bahia during
the first conquest of Sergipe in 1575-1576, and many Tobajara and Potig-
uar where enslaved during the Parafba campaigns of the 1580s, linked to
the expansion of the Pernambuco sugar industry. Another source of slaves
came from the Indians who sold themselves into slavery, which raised an
26
Schwartz, "Indian labor and New World plantations: European demands and Indian responses in
northeastern Brazil," American Historical Review 83 (1978).

1008 John Monteiro
interesting moral and ethical question about the legitimacy of slavery.

According to Fernao Cardim, a severe drought drove many Indians to
the plantations of Pernambuco, where they offered themselves and their
children to the planters as slaves.27 Most slaves, however, were submitted
to captivity by the many private, informal expeditions that began to
penetrate the sertao (backlands) regularly during the final years of the
century. Precursors to the seventeenth-century bandeiras, these slaving
expeditions often operated with the open consent of local authorities,
though clearly violating the precepts of royal legislation, which prohibited
unauthorized attacks on native peoples. But the law had other gaping
loopholes, especially that which permitted the ransom of war prisoners
taken to be sacrificed and eaten. The expeditions often adopted the term
resgate to describe their operation, which came to mean not only ransom
but also any other sort of trade with the Indians. Outfitted by planters,
who supplied weapons, provisions, and Indian warriors, individual expe-
ditions "ransomed" hundreds of slaves at a time, usually turning over
half to the financial backer and dividing the remaining half among the
participants of the expedition.
Many colonists, mainly half-breed mamalucos (usually spelled mame-
lucos), emerged as slaving specialists during this period. Raised by their
Indian mothers, these backwoodsmen were fluent in Tupi and well
versed in the ways of the sertao. The anonymous Jesuit who described
the conquest of Paraiba remarked on
the boldness and impertinence with which the slavers allow themselves to enter
that great wilderness, at great cost, for two, three, four or more years. They go
without God, without food, naked as the savages and subject to all the persecu-
tions and miseries in the world. These men venture two or three hundred
leagues into the sertao, serving the devil with such amazing martyrdom, just to
barter or steal slaves.28
One such "martyr" was Domingos Fernandes Nobre, also known as

Tomacaiina, a mamaluco from Pernambuco. In 1591 Tomacauna told his
fascinating life story to the Holy Office of the Inquisition, during its first
visitation to Brazil.29 This Christian subject no doubt startled his inquis-
itors as he described his life in the sertao, where he had relations with at
27
Cardim, Tratados da Terra, 199.
28
Quoted in John Hemming, Red gold (Cambridge, Mass., 1978), 154.
29
Joao Capistrano de Abreu (ed.), Primeira Visitagao do Santo Oficio as Panes do BrasiL Confissoes
da Bahia, 1591-92 (Rio de Janeiro, 1935), 220-227.

least seven different "wives," had smoked "holy grasses," and had painted
himself with dyes, all in native fashion. Evidently holding this freedom
in great esteem, "often he wished that he never return from the sertdo,
because there he had many wives and ate meat on forbidden days and
did everything else he wished without anyone paying notice." But To-
macaiina's heathenish ways served quite another purpose: He proved
indispensable to the slaving business, because he was able to penetrate
native societies with great ease, at times persuading them to migrate to
the coast or enticing them to attack other enemies in order to produce
captives. In 1572, for example, as part of the great Antonio Rodrigues
Adorno expedition to the interior of the captaincy of Porto Seguro,
Tomacauna led 7,000 Tupiguen (possibly Tupina) to the coast, where
they were divided among the colonists. The Jesuit Anchieta, witness to
many slaving expeditions, remarked that the crafty mamaluco backwoods-
men indeed were successful in persuading Indians to move to the coast,
though these soon realized that they had been tricked: "When they reach
the sea, the Portuguese divide them amongst themselves, some taking the
wives, others the husbands, others the children, and selling them."
NATIVE STRATEGIES OF RESISTANCE: MIGRATION AND

SANTIDADE
Seeking to oflfset the intensification of Portuguese slaving activities during
the second half of the century, native peoples developed new collective
strategies based not only on precolonial traditions and patterns but also
on the historical experience of conquest and domination. Some headmen,
particularly in areas settled only marginally by Europeans, sought to
preserve their people from a harsher fate by collaborating with Portuguese
slaving interests. For example, according to Manuel da Nobrega, the
Tupinikin of Porto Seguro and Ilheus served as brokers in the slave trade,
seizing Indians who came to the sea to collect shellfish and salt, selling
these captives to the Portuguese, who in turn shipped them to the
plantations of Bahia and Pernambuco. Coastal Guarani headmen also
gained considerable notoriety during this period as they supplied Portu-
guese and Spanish traders with captives taken on raids to the interior.
These relations afforded protection as long as the slavers' interests were
being satisfied, but they often broke down after a short number of years,
as indigenous collaborators themselves became the objects of slaving
expeditions.

IOIO John Monteiro
Migration provided the most effective method of combatting the

pernicious effects of disease, slavery, and confinement to missions. Many
Tupi groups abandoned coastal areas over the course of the sixteenth
century and reestablished their political autonomy on lands far removed
from Portuguese control. For example, after their defeat in Rio de Ja-
neiro, several Tamoio groups settled in the interior along the southern
Paraiba River, as well as along the Sao Francisco to the north. Various
Tupinamba groups departed from Bahia and Pernambuco during the
middle decades of the century; some established themselves on the east -
west coast between Ceara and the mouth of the Amazon, and others
came to control a significant area in the middle Amazon Valley. In the
wake of the conquest of Paraiba, disaffected segments of the Pernambuco
and Paraiba Tobajara came to occupy the Ibiapaba Hills in the interior
of Ceara, where they continued to repel Portuguese slavers and Jesuits
throughout the following century.
These movements became more frequent by the late 1550s, when
coastal societies faced an increasingly aggressive Indian policy, serious
epidemiological crises, and a rapid growth in the demand for slaves.
According to Gabriel Soares de Sousa, within a few years the Portuguese
under Governor Mem de Sa "destroyed and ruined the heathen that
lived around Bahia, burning and devastating over thirty villages, and
those who escaped being killed or enslaved fled to the sertao, removing
themselves more than forty leagues from the coast."30 In the 1580s a
Tupinamba leader from the Real River explained to the Jesuits his rea-
sons for leading a large group to the remote wilderness:
We must leave, we must leave before these Portuguese arrive. . . . We are not
fleeing from the Church or your Company, for if you wish to join us, we will
live with you in the forests and backlands.. . . But these Portuguese do not leave
us alone, and if so few who are among us already seize our brothers, what else
can we expect when the rest arrive,, but to see ourselves, our wives and our
children enslaved?31
Once established in new areas, migrant groups; did not necessarily

withdraw from all contact with the Portuguese,, though they preserved
bitter memories of their experience as. betrayed allies, mission Indians, or
slaves. Both the Tupinamba of Bahia, who moved to> the Raripe back-
lands of Sergipe,, and those of Pernambuco, who settled around Tupi-
30 31
Soares de Sousa,. Tratado Dtscritivoi, 132.. Quoted in Fernandes, OrganizacaO'Social,. 36.

Invaded Societies: i6th-Century Coastal Brazil ion
nambarana Island on the middle Amazon, served as intermediaries in die

Portuguese slave trade. The latter group, visited by several Spanish and
Portuguese expeditions in the mid—seventeenth century, confirmed that
they "were peoples who many years ago left the conquered lands of
Brazil, in Pernambuco, in defeat, fleeing the severity with which the
Portuguese had been subjugating them." According to Jesuit chronicler
Joao Felipe Bettendorff, who based his account on Crist6bal Acuna,
"they left in such great numbers that, in abandoning eighty-four villages,
there was not a single creature that they did not bring in their com-
pany."32
Far from simple retreats from the coast in reaction to Portuguese
advances, the many long-distance population movements registered
throughout the sixteenth century also obeyed the logic of age-old patterns
of rupture, migration, and recomposition of local political units. Often
quoting native informants, colonial sources reveal that these journeys,
even though clearly stimulated by colonial oppression, were organized
under the influence of a resolute headman or a prophetic caraiba. In
1549, for example, a weary group of some 300 Tupinamba led by Uirar-
acu appeared in the town of Chachapoyas, in the Peruvian Amazon.
There they told local Spanish authorities that "they were all fleeing from
the vexations they suffered from the Portuguese conquerors of that prov-
ince [Brazil]."33 Although it is not clear whether Uiraracu was a headman
or a caraiba, Pero Magalhaes Gandavo reported later in the century that
this trek was motivated by "their constant desire to seek new lands, in
which diey imagine that they will find immortality and perpetual ease,"
ostensibly a reference to the "land without evil."34 Later in the century,
according to a Jesuit report, Indian slaves of the Japace and Paranamirim
plantations in the Salvador area rebelled, "fleeing, to the sertao, in the
process burning plantations and robbing what they could." The reasons
behind this mass flight, aside from unjust captivity, were linked to the
prophetic message of an indigenous "saint" who urged the captives to
return to their place of origin, along the Real River.35
This last example, evidently led by a persuasive caraiba, was one of
many resistance movements with apparently millennarian characteristics
32
Joao Felipe-Bettendorff, S. J., Cronica do Padres da Companhia dt Jesus no Estado do Maranhao
(Belem;.i99o), 56-57.
33
Quoted'in Hemming, Red gold, 195. M Gandavo, Tratado da Terra, 144.
35
Francisco Adblib Varnhagent Histiria Geral do Brasil, I, 5 vols. (Sao Paulo and Belo Horizonte,
1981), 1:348; note by Capistrano de Abreu.

1012 John Monteiro
that punctuated the history of Luso-Indian relations during the second

half of the sixteenth century. Early on, the Jesuits adopted the term
santidade (holy figure or saintly cult) to describe elaborate ritual ceremo-
nies presided over by caraibas, who, evoking Tupi-Guarani myths and
traditions, exalted warfare and promised abundant crops and game. By
the late 1550s, however, the term acquired an explicitly subversive con-
notation, because in addition to their traditional discourse, the indige-
nous prophets also began to attack Christian institutions as well as the
domination structure imposed by Portuguese slave owners. In 1559, for
example, Father Nobrega reported the outbreak of a movement on a
plantation near Salvador, where an Indian from one of the Jesuit missions
spread an insurgent message among a growing number of slaves who
were eager to listen. A saint was to appear, transforming the master and
other whites into birds, freeing the subsistence plots of caterpillers and
other pests. The Jesuits were to be spared, though the Indians were to
destroy the Church, dissolve their Christian marriages, and take on many
wives. The movement was repressed by Mem de Sa, but the rebellious
caraiba managed to escape to the sertao?6
Another similar movement was described later in the century by Luisa
Barbosa, a white woman interrogated by the Inquisition. In 1591 Luisa
confessed that she herself was drawn into a santidade cult at the age of 12
(c. 1566), when converted Indians told her that their god "told them not
to work because food would sprout up by itself and that anyone who did
not believe in that santidade would be converted into sticks and stones,
and that the white people would be converted into game for them to
eat."37 Thus the prophetic message not only included the conventional
promise of a life of ease and abundance, associated with the "land
without evil," but also significantly restored the ideals of cannibalism and
revenge, which practically had been eradicated in the Salvador area by
the combined efforts of royal governors and the Jesuits.
Several authors erroneously have depicted the santidade as a single,
unified movement that spread along the coast and throughout the back-
lands over the course of several decades in the sixteenth century. In a
recent work on native "idolatries," Ronaldo Vainfas persuasively shows
that many different phenomena were called santidades, ranging from
traditional Tupi-Guarani shamanistic rituals to manifestly anticolonial
36
Valle, ed., Cartas Jcsuiticas, i.
37
Confession of Luisa Barbosa, in Abreu (ed.). Primeira VisitafSo, 83-84.

resistance.38 Lufsa Barbosa, in her confession to the Inquisition, asserted

that the cult she was drawn into as a child was followed by many others
that "after this arose also in this captaincy [of Bahia]." Indeed, given the
dynamics of precolonial political and religious movements, and consid-
ering the divide-and-rule characteristics of early Luso-indigenous rela-
tions, the emergence of several small movements organized by charis-
matic leaders makes more sense than a large messianic cult.
Nonetheless the development of the santidade near Jaguaripe, a sugar
and foodstuff-producing zone located just south of the Bay of All Saints,
continues to raise important questions about native resistance. Although
little is known about most other movements, which earned only brief
mentions in Jesuit letters and other early literature, the Jaguaripe move-
ment has come to light thanks to special circumstances; because the cult
was installed on a sugar plantation and enjoyed a considerable following
in the non-Indian community, it became a central concern of the Inqui-
sition during the 1591—1592 visita in Bahia. Unfortunately, however, as
Vainfas points out, not a single Indian was heard by the Inquisition,
though white and mixed-blood witnesses furnished information on the
cult in rich detail. According to these accounts, the cult emerged in the
sertao, possibly in the Orobo Hills near Jaguaripe, sometime around 1580.
Led by the charismatic Antonio, a Tupinamba who had run away from
a Jesuit aldeia at Tinhare, to the south of Bahia, the movement began to
attract a significant following of Indian and even African fugitives from
mission villages and slave plantations, causing great concern among sugar
planters and local authorities. In 1586 Governor Manuel Teles Barreto
and planter Fernao Cabral de Ataide hired the experienced backwoods-
man Tomacaiina to organize an expedition to destroy the cult, which
reputedly counted hundreds of followers. Although Tomacauna made
contact with the leader Antonio and observed some of his rituals, most
of the members of the sect remained with Antonio in the backlands,
avoiding contact with the Portuguese, while the expedition managed to
persuade a group of sixty to settle in a village near Ataide's mill in
Jaguaripe. The cult flourished for awhile on the plantation, incorporating
new members from the colonial community, but it was extinguished
completely by the early 1590s; isolated vestiges of the movement persisted
in the sertao, however.
Firmly based on traditional Tupinamba political and religious com-
38
Ronaldo Vainfas, A Heresia dos Indios (Sao Paulo, 1995).

1014 John Monteiro
ponents, the santidade of Jaguaripe, perhaps more than any other similar
movement that erupted in sixteenth-century Brazil, also borrowed heavily
from the hierarchical order introduced by Jesuits and slave owners. By
all accounts the leader of the movement displayed all the crucial charac-
teristics of the charismatic caraiba. Based on fresh archival material,
Vainfas demonstrates that Antonio was a gifted speaker, in the tradition
of persuasive Tupinamba leaders, and also commanded a profound un-
derstanding of Tupi-Guarani heroic mythology. The backwoodsman To-
macauna, himself son of an Indian mother and quite familiar with Tupi-
Guarani spritual life, was impressed by the shamanistic rituals conducted
by Antonio. But Tomacauna's account, perhaps the most detailed de-
scription of the movement before part of it was coopted by Fernao Cabral
de Ataide, also suggests that Antonio was more than the spokesman of
tradition and, in effect, also was the product of history.
Raised by Jesuits in the Tinhare mission, Antonio incorporated signif-
icant new elements to the prophetic experience. Declaring himself
"pope" and one of his wives "mother of God," Antonio established a
parallel church, complete with "bishops" and "vicars." According to
Vainfas new members were accepted to the cult through a sort of reverse
baptism, in which Christian names were substituted with names given
by the leader. His message also mixed Tupinamba and colonial images:
Beyond the usual appeal to a world of abundance, where crops would
produce themselves, where arrows would shoot spontaneously through
the air slaying game, and above all where the enemy would fall easily
captive to heroic warriors, Antonio's message also addressed the problem
of colonial oppression. According to the confession of Gohcalo Fernan-
des, a mamaluco, the cult attracted many Indian slaves and mission
residents, who fled from the plantations and aldeias. Using an incompre-
hensible language invented by the members of the santidade, possibly in
emulation of the Latin ritual of the aldeias, and inspired by a stone idol,
cult leaders claimed that their God was to come immediately and "free
them from slavery and make them the masters of the white people, who
were to become their captives."39
The santidade often has been classified as a typical, syncretic "religion
of the oppressed," but it remains important to recognize how this and
other movements — such as the Guarani rebellion led by Obera in 157940 —
35
Confession of Gonfalo Fernandes, in Abreu (ed.), Primcira VisitagSo, in.
40
Bartomeu Melia, El Guarani, conquistadoy reducido (Asuncion, 1986), 30-40.

consciously combined tradition and revivalism with historically new ele-

ments in order to forge novel strategies that aimed to restore indigenous
collective identity in a dynamic fashion. The challenges of contact and
conquest introduced new pressures, which, in the long run, eroded age-
old patterns and contributed to the decline of indigenous coastal Brazil.
Nonetheless in facing adversaries of the likes of contagious diseases,
colonial armies, and, above all, an Atlantic economy in inexorable expan-
sion, indigenous peoples reached into their own past to draw both
strategies of survival as well as the will to resist the advances of colonial
domination. Thus, while the indigenous history of Brazil continues to be
a neglected subject, the task facing future historians is much greater than
simply emphasizing the role of Indians in an essentially colonial history;
it also means rethinking Indian history itself— that is, the history expe-
rienced and reflected upon by Brazil's native peoples.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Mostly dated or limited in scope, research tools dealing with sixteenth-

century Portuguese America are useful primarily as guides to the early
sources. The most comprehensive ethnographic bibliography on Brazilian
Indians, with extensive commentaries on sources, is Herbert Baldus,
Bibliografia Critica da Etnologia Brasileira (Sao Paulo, 1954, and Hanno-
ver, 1968), which has been enriched by a third volume compiled by
Thekla Hartmann (Munich, 1984). Bartomeu Melia et al., O Guarani:
Uma Bibliografia Etnologica (Santo Angelo, 1987), is excellent on Guarani
ethnohistory, with many references to the Brazilian coast during the
sixteenth century. Originally published in 1949, Florestan Fernandes,
"Urn Balanco Critico da Contribuicao Etnografica dos Cronistas," in
Investigagdo Etnoldgica no Brasil (Petr6polis, 1975), 191-298, is a detailed
and systematic reading of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century printed
accounts. Though generally glossing over the theme of Portuguese -
Indian relations, Jose Hon6rio Rodrigues provides excellent insights to
sources and their disparate editions in Histdria da Historia do Brasil,
Primeira Parte: Historiografia Colonial (2nd ed., Sao Paulo, 1979). For
English-language sources, Francis Dutra, A guide to the history of colonial
Brazil, 1500-1822 (Santa Barbara, 1980) is very useful. A recent guide to
unpublished sources is John Monteiro (ed.), Guia de Fontes para a His-
tdria Indigena e do Indigenismo em Arquivos Brasileiros (Sao Paulo, 1994).
Many sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European sources contain

1016 John Monteiro
rich ethnohistorical information on the coastal peoples. Hans Staden,

The captivity of Hans Stade of Hesse, in A.D. i$4j-itf$ among the wild
tribes of eastern Brazil, translated by A. Tootal with notes by Richard
Burton (London, 1874), is the extraordinary narrative of a German adven-
turer who spent several years as captive among the Tupinamba, contain-
ing lively descriptions of Tupi social organization, ritual activities, war-
fare, and cannibalism. Another German, Ulrich Schmidl, includes
important comments on Guarani and Tupinikin groups in his Wahrhaf
tige Historie einer wunderbaren Schijfart (Frankfurt, 1567), also translated
into English (London, 1889). The French colony of Rio de Janeiro
produced two excellent, sensitive accounts of Tupinamba society: Andre
Thevet, Les Singularites de la France Antarctique (Paris, 1558), and Jean de
Lery, History of a voyage to the land of Brazil, trans. Janet Whatley (1578;
Berkeley, 1990). Early seventeenth-century Capuchins from the French
colony at Maranhao also contribute to our understanding of the Tupi-
namba: Claude d'Abbeville, Histoire de la Mission des Peres Capucins en
lisle de Maragnan (Paris, 1614), and Yves d'Evreux, Voyage dans le Nord
du Bresil (Paris, 1614). Staden, Lery, and Thevet have been issued in
good, critical Portuguese translations by the Editora da Universidade de
Sao Paulo. Finally, the Englishman Anthony Knivet, who spent several
years among the Tamoios in Sao Vicente and even led a migration to the
far southern coast, registered his "Admirable adventures and strange
fortunes," in Samuel Purchas (ed.), Hakluytus Postumas or Purchas his
Pilgrimes, (facs. ed., New York, 1965), 16, 177-289.
Portuguese sources on the Brazilian Indians begin with Pero Vaz
Caminha's letter to the crown, which appears in The voyages of Pedro
Alvares Cabral to Brazil and India (London, 1937), translated and anno-
tated by William B. Greenlee. Portuguese—Indian relations during the
first half of the sixteenth century remain poorly documented, though the
records published in Capistrano de Abreu's critical edition of Francisco
Adolfo de Varnhagen's Historia Geral do Brasil, 5 vols. (1854; 10th ed.,
Sao Paulo 1981), and in Carlos Malheiro Dias (ed.), Historia da Coloni-
zaqao Portuguesa do Brasil, 3 vols. (Porto, 1921—1924), fill the gap some-
what. Another important source for this period is the diary of Martim
Afonso de Sousa's voyage, published with supplementary documents in
Eugenio de Castro (ed.), Didrio de Navegacdo de Pero Lopes de Sousa, 2
vols. (Rio de Janeiro, 1927), with information on early relations with the
Tupinikin and Guarani of the southern coast. The picture improves
markedly after 1549, with the arrival of royal government and the Jesuits.

Among the principal non-Jesuit Portuguese sources, Pero de Magalhaes

Gandavo, Tratado da Terra do Brasil e Histdria da Provincia de Santa
Cruz (1576; 2nd ed., Sao Paulo and Belo Horizonte, 1980) and English
translation (New York, 1922), includes an important discussion of Indian
customs, slavery, and population movements; Gabriel Soares de Sousa,
Tratado Descritivo do Brasil em I$8J (Sao Paulo, 1971), provides the best
contemporary description of the Tupinamba, particularly in the region
surrounding the Bay of All Saints; and Ambrosio Fernandes Brandao,
Dialogues of the great things ofBrazil, trans. Frederick Holden Hall (1618;
Albuquerque, 1987), offers a description of indigenous and colonial soci-
eties at the beginning of the seventeenth century. In 1627 the Franciscan
Vicente do Salvador penned the first systematic history of the Brazilian
coast, Histdria do Brasil (7th ed., Sao Paulo and Belo Horizonte, 1982),
especially rich in its narrative of Luso-Indian relations in the northern
captaincies.
Jesuit writings constitute perhaps the most important sources on na-
tive societies produced in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Ser-
afim Leite, S. J., prepared a careful edition of Jesuit letters and reports
from the 1550s and 1560s, covering the critical phase of the aldeia experi-
ence: Monumenta Brasiliae, 5 vols. (Rome, 1956—1960), whose first 3 vols.
were published in Brazil as Cartas dos Primeiros fesuitas (Sao Paulo, 1956—
1958). Selected letters of Anchieta, Nobrega, and other contemporary
Jesuits edited by Alfredo do Valle Cabral in the 1930s have been reissued
as Cartas Jesuiticas, 3 vols. (Sao Paulo and Belo Horizonte, 1988). The
complete works of Anchieta, certainly the greatest sixteenth-century au-
thority on the Brazilian Indians, are being published by Edicoes Loyola,
including Cartas de Anchieta, Correspondencia Ativa e Passiva (2nd ed.,
Sao Paulo, 1984), a selection of letters edited by Helio Viotti, S. J.; Textos
Historicos (Sao Paulo, 1989), also edited by Viotti, including important
treatises on the coastal Tupi; De Gestis Mendi de Saa (2nd ed., Sao Paulo,
1984), a panegyric poem in praise of Mem de Sa and his feats during the
Tamoio War; and Teatro de Anchieta (Sao Paulo, 1977), consisting of
religious plays in Portuguese and lingua geral written for Indian converts.
Even though of considerable ethnohistorical relevance, Anchieta's non-
prose and Tupi writings have not received much scholarly attention.
Another extraordinary Jesuit source is Fernao Cardim, S. J., Tratados da
Terra e Gente do Brasil (3rd ed., Sao Paulo, 1978), first published in
English by Samuel Purchas in 1625. The anonymous "Sumario das Ar-
madas que se Fizeram e Guerras que se Deram na Conquista da Paraiba

1018 John Monteiro
(c. 1587)," Revista do Institute Histdrico e Geogrdfico Brasileiro 36(1) (1873),

later attributed to the Jesuit Simao de Travassos, contains valuable infor-
mation on indigenous politics during the conquest of Paraiba. Finally,
the excellent chronicles of Simao de Vasconcelos, S. J., written in the
mid—seventeendi century, deserve mention because of their careful study
of early Jesuit-Indian relations: Vida do Padre Joao d'Almeida (Lisbon,
1658); Cronica da Companhia de Jesus no Brasil (1663; 3rd ed., Petropolis,
1977); and Vida do Venerdvel Padre Jose de Anchieta, 2 vols. (1672; 2nd
ed., Rio de Janeiro, 1943).
Several documentary sets include information on different aspects of
native history and European Indian policy. Official correspondence and
legislation dealing with the Indian question appear in several volumes of
Documentos Histdricos da Biblioteca Nacional do Rio de Janeiro, n o vols.
(Rio de Janeiro, 1928—1955). Mem de Sa's activities are registered in his
service record along with other documents published as "Documentos
Relativos a Mem de Sd," Anais da Biblioteca Nacional 27 (1905), 119-280.
The role of Indian labor during the early years of the sugar industry
comes to light in Documentos para a Histdria do Aqucar, 3 vols. (Rio de
Janeiro, 1954—1963). Indian—white relations in the southern captaincies
were the frequent concern of municipal council meetings in Sao Paulo,
published as Atas da C&mara Municipal de Sao Paulo, I (Sao Paulo, 1914)
and Registro Geral da C&mara de Sao Paulo, I (Sao Paulo, 1917). The
proceedings of the special Inquisition court installed in Bahia by Heitor
Furtado de Mendonca were published in Capistrano de Abreu (ed.),
Primeira Visitacao do Santo Oficio as Partes do Brasil: Conjissdes da Bahia,
i$pi—p2 (Rio de Janeiro, 1935), especially useful in documenting the
santidade of Jaguaripe. Recently, Ronaldo Vainfas edited an updated
version of these documents, with rich notes based on previously unveiled
manuscript sources: Confissoes da Bahia (Sao Paulo, 1997). Finally, Darcy
Ribeiro and Carlos de Araiijo Moreira Neto (eds.), A Fundagao do Brasil
(Petr6polis, 1992), provides a good selection of document excerpts from
Brazil's first two centuries, with a special focus on native actors.
Although somewhat burdened by detail, the best general work on the
historical experience of the Brazilian Indians during the colonial period
is John Hemming, Red gold: The conquest of the Brazilian Indians, 1500—
IJ6O (Cambridge, Mass., 1978). Berta Ribeiro, O Indio na Histdria do
Brasil (Sao Paulo, 1983), aimed at a general audience, is a useful guide to
some of the issues. Mercio Gomes Pereira, Os Indios e 0 Brasil (Petropolis,
1988), presents a broad overview of die question of ethnic survival in an

historical framework. An important collection of essays addressing the

problem of Indian history in Brazil is Manuela Carneiro da Cunha (ed.),
Histdria dos Indios no Brasil (Sao Paulo, 1992). Some of the older inter-
pretive works on Brazilian history dedicate considerable coverage to the
indigenous background and early relations between Europeans and na-
tives. Robert Southey's pioneer History of Brazil, 3 vols. (London, 1810-
1819) pays particular attention to early Indian-white relations, and Varn-
hagen's Histdria Geral do Brasil, though manifestly unsympathetic toward
the Indians, includes relevant information on all the captaincies. Recently
translated into English, Joao Capistrano de Abreu's turn-of-the-century
classic Chapters ofBrazil's colonial history, 1500—1800, trans. Arthur Braekel
(New York, 1997), introduced fresh insights to colonial history, though
his most brilliant contributions were on the seventeenth century. The
essays covering the sixteenth century in Sergio Buarque de HoUanda
(ed.), Histdria Geral da Civilizacao Brasileira, I, 2 vols. (Sao Paulo, i960),
await a much-needed current revision. Among more recent works, James
Lockhart and Stuart Schwartz, Early Latin America (Cambridge, 1983),
and the articles by Harold B. Johnson, Stuart Schwartz, and John Hem-
ming in Leslie Bethell (ed.), Colonial Brazil (Cambridge, 1987), provide
neat syntheses on early Portuguese America.
The concise manual of Aryon Dall'Igna Rodrigues, Linguas Brasileiras.
Para 0 Conhecimento das Linguas Indigenas (Sao Paulo, 1986), is most
useful for sorting out native language groups, and Curt Nimuendaju's
Mapa Etno-histdrko do Brasil e Regioes Adjacentes, (2nd ed., Rio de Ja-
neiro, 1981) remains a convenient research tool. Varied population esti-
mates may be found in the following: William Denevan, "The aboriginal
population of Amazonia," in W. Denevan (ed.)> The native population of
the Americas in 1492, (Madison, 1977); the appendix to Hemming's Red
gold; and Berta Ribeiro, "Quantos Seriam os fndios das Americas?,"
Ciencia Hoje, 1(6) (1983), 54-60. Warren Dean, "The indigenous popu-
lation of the Sao Paulo-Rio de Janeiro coast: trade, aldeamento, slavery
and extinction," Revista de Histdria nj (1984), 3-26, studies the factors
contributing to demographic decline after the conquest. Specifically on
the spread of disease, Dauril Alden and Joseph C. Miller, "Out of Africa:
The slave trade and the transmission of smallpox to Brazil, c. 1560-1830,"
Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18(1) (1987), 195-224, furnishes fresh
insights.
The Tupi-Guarani peoples of the coast have received extensive schol-
arly attention, though primarily from anthropological perspectives. Alfred

1020 John Monteiro
Metraux made pioneer contributions on Tupinamba society, religion,

and migrations in his La Civilisation Materielle des Tribus Tupi-Guarani
(Paris, 1928), La Religion des Tupinamba et ses Rapports avec celle des autres
Tribus Tupi-Guarani (Paris, 1928), and "Les Migrations Historiques des
Tupi-Guaranis," Journal de la Societe des Americanistes 19 (1927), 1-45.
Florestan Fernandes's brilliant studies, while strongly marked by a func-
tionalist framework, remain central to any discussion of the Tupinamba,
particularly with respect to warfare: Organizagao Social dos Tupinambd
(Sao Paulo, 1948), and A Funcdo Social da Guerra na Sociedade Tupi-
nambd (Sao Paulo, 1952). On political organization, Pierre Clastres devel-
ops suggestive hypotheses in Society against the state, trans. Robert Hurley
(New York, 1977), and Tupi-Guarani shamanism and migrations are
minutely dissected in Helene Clastres, The land-without-evil: Tupi-
Guarani prophetism, trans. Jacqueline G. Brovender (Urbana, 1995). Not
surprisingly, Tupinamba warfare, sacrifice, and cannibalism continue to
stimulate scholarly debates. Donald W. Forsyth, "Beginnings of Brazilian
anthropology: Jesuits and Tupinamba Indians," Journal of Anthropological
Research 39 (1983), 147-178, challenges William Arens's thesis questioning
the veracity of eyewitness sources. Isabelle Combes, La Tragedie Canni-
bale chez les Anciens Tupi-Guarani (Paris, 1992), includes a meticulous
reconstruction and critical discussion of this question. Focusing on the
historical dimension of Tupinamba society, two important contributions
to the theoretical debate deserve mention: Manuela Carneiro da Cunha
and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, "Vinganca e Temporalidade: Os Tupi-
namba," Journal de la Societe des Americanistes 79 (1987), 191-208, and
Carlos Fausto, "Fragmentos de Historia e Cultura Tupinamba," in Man-
uela Carneiro da Cunha (ed.), Histdria dos Indios no Brasil (Sao Paulo,
1992). For a stimulating revision of Tupi studies, with a critical discussion
of Metraux and especially Florestan Fernandes, see Eduardo Viveiros de
Castro, Arawete: Os Deuses Canibais (Rio de Janeiro, 1986), which pro-
poses a bridge between "ethnographic" and "historical" Tupi peoples. A
revised version of this important book was published in English as From
the enemy's point of view (Chicago, 1992). There are no solid studies of
sixteenth-century Ge groups. For a synthesis of modern Ge studies, see
Manuela Carneiro da Cunha, "Etudes Ge," L'Homme, 126—128 (1993).
Early European—Indian relations have been studied mainly from the
optic of Portuguese policies and legislation. For general overviews of
Portuguese Indian policy, see Georg Thomas, Die portugiesische Indianer-
politik in Brasilien, 1500-1640 (Berlin, 1968), Portuguese translation (Sao

Paulo, 1983); and Jose Vicente Cesar, "Situacao Legal do Indio durante o
Periodo Colonial: 1500-1822," America Indigena 45 (1985), 391-426.
Though dated, Agostinho Marques Perdigao Malheiros, A Escraviddo no
Brasil: Ensaio Historico-juridico-social, 3 vols. (1867; 3rd ed., Petr6polis,
1976), covers Indian legislation, especially with regard to slavery, in Vol.
II. A more recent compilation and discussion is Beatriz Perrone-Moises,
"Legislacao Indigena Colonial: Inventario e Indice," unpublished mes-
trado thesis, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, 1990, part of which
appears as an appendix to M. C. da Cunha (ed.), Histdria dos tndios no
Brasil. The land issue receives illuminating treatment from an ethical and
legal perspective in Manuela Carneiro da Cunha, "Terra Indigena: His-
toria da Doutrina e da Legislacao," in her Os Direitos do Indio: Ensaios e
Documentos (Sao Paulo, 1986), 53—101. A fresh discussion on the legal
principles underlying "Just Wars" is Beatriz Perrone-Moises, "A Guerra
Justa em Portugal no Seculo XVI," Revista da SBPH 5 (1989/90), 5-10.
The impact of initial contact with the Brazilian Indians on European
thought has been the object of a growing bibliography, taking up many
of the points introduced by Sergio Buarque de Hollanda in his classic
Visao do Paraiso (Rio de Janeiro, 1959). Laura de Mello e Sousa, in O
Diabo na Terra de Santa Cruz (Sao Paulo, 1987) and Inferno Atlantico
(Sao Paulo, 1993), discusses the Edenic and Demonic images that
emerged from early colonial contacts in a fresh light. Ronald Raminelli,
Imagens do Indio (Sao Paulo, 1996), focuses more specifically on Euro-
pean iconographic representations of the Indians. Three other innovative
studies add interesting perspectives on this period: Leyla Perrone-Moises,
Vinte luas (Sao Paulo, 1992), based on Paulmier de Gonneville's early
travel account, reconstructs the life story of a Guarani Indian who was
taken to Europe by the French; Guillermo Giucci, Sem Fe, Lei ou Rei.
Brasil 1500-1532 (Rio de Janeiro, 1993), examines the process of "acciden-
tal colonization" involving European castaways; and Ronaldo Vainfas,
Trdpico dos Pecados (Rio de Janeiro, 1997), casts interethnic sexual liaisons
and miscegenation in a new mold, establishing a fruitful dialogue with
Gilberto Freyre's 1933 classic, The masters and the slaves, trans. Samuel
Putnam (New York, 1946). French-Indian early relations in Rio de
Janeiro are placed in comparative perspective by Olive P. Dickason, The
myth of the savage and the beginnings of French colonialism in the Americas
(Edmonton, 1984). Finally, the impact of these relations on French
thought is covered by Frank Lestringant, Le Huguenot et le Sauvage (Paris,
1990).

1022 John Monteiro
O n native labor, Alexander Marchant's pioneer study, From barter to

slavery: The economic relations of Portuguese and Indians in the settlement
of Brazil, 1500—1580 (Baltimore, 1942), remains a standard work, though
his model of indigenous economic response has been questioned. Urs
Honer, Die Versklavung der brasilianischen Indianer: der Arbeitsmarkt in
portugiesisch Amerika im XVI. Jahrhundert (Zurich, 1980), focuses specif-
ically on the development of slavery, though based mainly on legal
sources. The debate over early labor relations has been considerably
enriched through the study of plantation records by Stuart Schwartz in
"Indian labor and New World plantations: European demands and In-
dian responses in northeastern Brazil," American Historical Review 83(1)
(1978), 43-79, as well as in his larger work, Sugar plantations in the
formation of Brazilian society: Bahia, itfo-1855 (Cambridge, 1985). The
conflict between colonists, Jesuits, and the crown over Indian labor is
discussed in Dauril Alden, "Black robes versus white settlers: The strug-
gle for freedom of the Indians in colonial Brazil," in H. Peckam and C.
Gibson (eds.), Attitudes of colonial powers toward the American Indian
(Salt Lake City, 1969), as well as in Stuart Schwartz, Sovereignty and
society in colonial Brazil (Berkeley, 1973). Focusing on the southern cap-
taincies, John Monteiro, Negros da Terra: tndios e Bandeirantes nas Ori-
gens de Sao Paulo (Sao Paulo, 1994), provides new evidence and fresh
insights on the problem of Indian slavery.
The role of the Jesuits is exhaustively described (and defended) in
Serafim Leite, S. J., Histdria da Companhia de Jesus no Brasil, 10 vols.
(Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro, 1938-1950). An alternative view may be
found in Eduardo Hoornaert (ed.), Histdria da Igreja no Brasil: Ensaio de
Interpretaqao a Partir do Povo, 2 vols. (Petr6polis, 1979). Dauril Alden's
massive The making of an enterprise: The Society of Jesus in Portugal, its
empire, and beyond, 1540-1750 (Stanford, 1996), places the Brazilian expe-
rience within the wider context of Portuguese expansion to Africa and
Asia, with important new insights on the spiritual, economic, and politi-
cal activities of the missionaries. For interesting discussions of Jesuit
strategies of "cultural repression" in sixteenth-century Brazil, see Luiz
Felipe Baeta Neves, O Combate dos Soldados de Cristo na Terra dos
Papagaios: Colonialismo e Repressao Cultural (Rio de Janeiro, 1978), and
Roberto Gambini, O Espelho Indio: Os Jesuitas e a Destruicao da Alma
Indlgena (Rio de Janeiro, 1988), which provocatively seeks to analyze
Jesuit thought and actions in Jungian terms. An instigating article pro-
posing the Indian perspective on Jesuit activities and expectations is

Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, "O Marmore e a Murta," Revista de Antro-

pologia 35 (1992), 21-74.
The indigenous response to conquest is outlined in Florestan Fernan-
des, "Os Tupi e a Reacao Tribal a Conquista," Investigagdo Etnologica no
Brasil e Outros Ensaios (Petropolis, 1976), 11—32. For a different approach,
emphasizing native strategies as political actions, see Mario Maestri Filho,
Os Senhores do Literal (Porto Alegre, 1994). There is a growing bibliog-
raphy that explores the historical roots of contemporary indigenous rights
movements. Interesting examples treating groups mentioned in this arti-
cle include Frans Moonen and Luciano Mariz Maia (eds.), Etnohistoria
dos lndios Potiguara (Joao Pessoa, 1992), which traces the contact history
and struggles of these Northeastern Indians over the past five centuries,
and Judith Shapiro, "From Tupa to the land without evil," American
Ethnologist 14 (1987), 126-139, which discusses the link between Tupi-
Guarani religious reinterpretation in colonial times and modern Libera-
tion Theology discourse. Finally, the Santidade movements are studied
by Jose Calasans in Fernao Cabral de Ataide e a Santidade de Jaguaripe
(Salvador, 1952), and Ronaldo Vainfas, A Heresia dos lndios, (Sao Paulo,
1995), presents abundant new information from Inquisition records.

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THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY

OF THE NATIVE PEOPLES OF

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"It is impossible either to enumerate or comprehend the multitude of

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Coastal Brazil, ca. 1560

>rto Seguro (1535)

ipfrito Santo (1551)

'anta Catarina Island

INDIGENOUS POPULATIONS OF THE BRAZILIAN COAST

present territorial limits of Brazil. Many of these families have been

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eighteenth century by runaway slaves possibly of Guarani origin. In short,

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ology, presents an even bolder argument in favor of the emergence of

THE COASTAL TUPI PEOPLES

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fragmented as the political makeup of indigenous Brazil, coastal Tupi

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' Scares de Sousa, Tratado Descritivo, 303.

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followers. In describing leadership in Tupinamba communities, Pero de

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The ongoing conflicts between Tupi groups assumed gigantic propor-

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Tupinamba elders, according to Lery, constantly reminded their fellow

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THE PATH OF CONQUEST

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sented a solution for the same problem, constituting a considerable

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In spite of our efforts, our interpreters succeeded in purchasing only a few of

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Indeed, the Europeans found it difficult to undercut the social and

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Nobrega, writing in 1557, the origins of the Tamoio War followed a

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INDIAN LAND AND LABOR IN A RAPIDLY CHANGING

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led a powerful contingent of Tupinamba allies against the Tupinikin of

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Jesuits dedicated themselves to itinerant missionary activities among the

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and regeneration, which characterized precolonial village formation. The

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village, and stocks were erected for exemplary punishment of relapsed

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perish in cannibalistic rituals — the so-called indios da corda, or bound

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interesting moral and ethical question about the legitimacy of slavery.

One such "martyr" was Domingos Fernandes Nobre, also known as

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