The Tupi people, a subdivision of the Tupi-Guarani linguistic families, were one of the largest groups of indigenous peoples in Brazil before Colonial Brazil. Scholars believe that while they first settled in the Amazon rainforest, from about 2,900 years ago the Tupi started to migrate southward and gradually occupied the Atlantic coast of Southeast Brazil.
Many Tupi people today are merged with the Guaraní people, forming the Tupi–Guarani languages. The Guarani languages are a subdivision of the Tupian languages.
History
The Tupi people inhabited 3/4 of all of Brazil's coast when the
Portugal first arrived there. In 1500, their population was estimated at 1 million people, nearly equal to the population of Portugal at the time. They were divided into
, each tribe numbering from 300 to 2,000 people. Some examples of these tribes are:
Tupiniquim,
Tupinambá,
Potiguara,
Tabajara,
Caetés,
Temiminó,
Tamoios. The Tupi were adept
agriculture; they grew
cassava,
maize,
,
,
,
tobacco, squash,
cotton and many others. There was not a unified Tupi identity despite the fact that they spoke a common language.
European colonization
Upon discovering the existence of the Tupi people, it was assumed by Portuguese settlers that they lacked any sort of religion, a belief that began the process of assimilating the Tupi to Christianity.
The settlers began erecting villages for the Tupi, known as aldeias, with the intention of more disciplined religious conversion and institutionalization of European customs.
Aside from being assimilated, the Tupi were found to be of use to the Portuguese, who required laborers for cultivating and shipping their exports. This use in harvesting resources led to their eventual enslavement and in turn, the spread of fatal European diseases on the plantations they worked at.
This combination of factors nearly led to their complete annihilation, with the exception of a few isolated communities. The remnants of these tribes are today confined to indigenous territories or acculturated to some degree into the dominant society.
Religion
As Eduardo Navarro explains in his
Dicionário de Tupi Antigo (2013), the different Tupi peoples believed they descended from a mythological character called Tupi. Because of this, many Tupi tribes had ethnonyms that began with "tupi", such as the Tupinambá, the
Tupiniquim, the Tupiguaé and the Tupiminó.
[NAVARRO, E. A. Dicionário de Tupi Antigoː a Língua Indígena Clássica do Brasil. São Paulo. Global. 2013. p. 484.] However, the main cult among the Tupi who inhabited the coast of Brazil in the 16th century was not that of Tupi, but that of . Tupã, the thunder, was not actually a god, but rather a manifestation of the god . Precisely because Tupã did not have his own rite, the Catholic priests who sought to spread Christianity among the Indians chose Tupã as a symbol for the
Christian god, in order to facilitate the understanding of Christianity by the Indians, grafting Christian principles onto the figure of Tupã. At the same time, they associated Jurupari with the
Christian devil, in order to discourage his worship among the Tupi Indians.
[CASCUDO, L. C. Geografia dos mitos brasileiros. 3ª edição. São Paulo. Global. 2002. p. 57,58.]
Cannibalism
According to primary source accounts by primarily European writers, the Tupi were divided into several tribes which would constantly engage in war with each other. In these wars the Tupi would normally try to capture their enemies to kill later in cannibalistic rituals.
[Darcy Ribeiro – O Povo Brasileiro, Vol. 07, 1997 (1997), pp. 28 to 33; 72 to 75 and 95 to 101."]
The
captured from other Tupi tribes were eaten as it was believed by them that this would lead to their strength being absorbed and digested; thus, in fear of absorbing weakness, they chose only to sacrifice warriors perceived to be strong and brave. For the Tupi warriors, even when prisoners, it was a great honor to die valiantly during battle or to display courage during the festivities leading to the sacrifice.
The Tupi have also been documented to eat the remains of dead relatives as a form of honoring them.
[Agnolin, Adone. O apetite da antropologia. São Paulo, Associação Editorial Humanitas, 2005. p. 285.]
The practice of cannibalism among the Tupi was made famous in Europe by Hans Staden, a German soldier, mariner, and mercenary, traveling to Brazil to seek a fortune, who was captured by the Tupi in 1552. In his account published in 1557, he tells that the Tupi carried him to their village where it was claimed he was to be devoured at the next festivity. There, he allegedly won the friendship of a powerful chief, whom he cured of a disease, and his life was spared.[Staden, Hans. Duas viagens ao Brasil: primeiros registros sobre o Brasil. Porto Alegre: L&PM, 2011, p. 51-52]
Cannibalistic rituals among Tupi and other tribes in Brazil decreased steadily after European contact and religious intervention. When Cabeza de Vaca, a Spanish conquistador, arrived in Santa Catarina in 1541, for instance, he attempted to ban cannibalistic practices in the name of the King of Spain.
Because our understanding of Tupi cannibalism relies mostly on primary source accounts of primarily European writers, the very existence of cannibalism has been disputed by some in academic circles. William Arens seeks to discredit Staden's and other writers' accounts of cannibalism in his book The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology & Anthropophagy, where he claims that when concerning the Tupinambá, "rather than dealing with an instance of serial documentation of cannibalism, we are more likely confronting only one source of dubious testimony which has been incorporated almost verbatim into the written reports of others claiming to be eyewitnesses".
Most Brazilian scholars, however, attest to the cultural centrality of cannibalism in Tupian culture. Anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro who had deeply studied the historical accounts about the Tupi, reported that the Ka'apor people of the Tupi-Guaraní linguistic and cultural family confirmed that their ancestors had practiced anthropophagical rituals similar to the ones described in the 16th century.
Race-mixing and Cunhadismo
Many indigenous peoples were important for the formation of the Brazilian people, but the main group was the Tupi. When the Portuguese explorers arrived in Brazil in the 16th century, the Tupi were the first indigenous group to have contact with them. Soon, a process of mixing between Portuguese settlers and indigenous women started. The Portuguese colonists rarely brought women, making the native women the "breeding matrix of the Brazilian people".
When the first Europeans arrived, the phenomenon of "
cunhadismo" (from Portuguese
cunhado, "brother in law") began to spread by the colony.
Cunhadismo was an old native tradition of incorporating strangers to their community. The Natives offered the Portuguese an Indigenous girl as wife. Once he agreed, he formed a bond of kinship with all the Natives of the tribe.
Polygyny, a common practice among South American Indigenous people, was quickly adopted by European settlers. This way, a single European man could have dozens of indigenous wives (
temericós).
was used as recruitment of labour. The Portuguese could have many
temericós and thus a huge number of Indigenous relatives who were induced to work for him, especially to cut
pau-brasil and take it to the ships on the coast. In the process, a large mixed-race (
mameluco) population was formed, which in fact occupied Brazil. Without the practice of
cunhadismo, the Portuguese colonization was impractical. The number of Portuguese men in Brazil was very small and Portuguese women were even fewer in number. The proliferation of mixed-race people in the wombs of indigenous women provided for the occupation of the territory and the consolidation of the Portuguese presence in the region.
Influence in Brazil
Although the Tupi population largely disappeared because of European
to which they had no resistance or because of slavery, a large population of maternal Tupi ancestry occupied much of Brazilian territory, taking the ancient traditions to several points of the country.
Darcy Ribeiro wrote that the features of the first Brazilians were much more Tupi than Portuguese, and even the language that they spoke was a Tupi-based language, named Nheengatu or Língua Geral, a
lingua franca in Brazil until the 18th century.
The region of São Paulo was the biggest in the proliferation of Mamelucos, who in the 17th century under the name of
Bandeirantes, spread throughout the Brazilian territory, from the Amazon rainforest to the extreme
Southern Brazil. They were responsible for the major expansion of the Iberian culture in the interior of Brazil. They acculturated the indigenous tribes who lived in isolation, and took the language of the colonizer, which was not Portuguese yet, but Nheengatu itself, to the most inhospitable corners of the colony. Nheengatu is still spoken in certain regions of the Amazon, although the Tupi-speaking Natives did not live there. The Nheengatu language, as in other regions of the country, was introduced there by Bandeirantes from São Paulo in the 17th century. The way of life of the
Old Paulistas could almost be confused with the Natives. Within the family, only Nheengatu was spoken. Agriculture, hunting, fishing and gathering of fruits were also based on indigenous traditions. What differentiated the
Old Paulistas from the Tupi was the use of clothes, salt, metal tools, weapons and other European items.
When these areas of large Tupi influence started to be integrated into the
market economy, Brazilian society gradually started to lose its Tupi characteristics. The Portuguese language became dominant and Língua Geral virtually disappeared. The rustic indigenous techniques of production were replaced by European ones, in order to elevate the capacity of
exportation.
Brazilian Portuguese absorbed many words from Tupi. Some examples of Portuguese words that came from Tupi are:
mingau, mirim, soco, cutucar, tiquinho, perereca, tatu. The names of several local fauna – such as
arara ("
macaw"),
jacaré ("South American
alligator"),
tucano ("
toucan") – and flora – e.g.
mandioca ("
manioc") and
abacaxi ("
pineapple") – are also derived from the Tupi language. A number of places and cities in modern Brazil are named in Tupi (
Itaquaquecetuba, Pindamonhangaba, Caruaru,
Ipanema). Anthroponyms include
Ubirajara,
Ubiratã,
Moema,
Jussara,
Jurema,
Janaína.
Tupi surnames do exist, but they do not imply any real Tupi ancestry; rather they were adopted as a manner to display Brazilian nationalism.
The Tupinambá tribe is fictitiously portrayed in Nelson Pereira dos Santos' satirical 1971 film How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman ( Como Era Gostoso o Meu Francês). Its name is also adapted by science: Tupinambis is a genus of , arguably the best-known lizards of Brazil.
The large offshore Tupi oil field discovered off the coast of Brazil in 2006 was named in honor of the Tupi people.
The Guaraní are a different native group that inhabits southern Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia and northern Argentina and speaks the distinct Guaraní languages, but these are in the same language family as Tupi.
Legacy
The Tupi people had a great cultural influence on the countries they inhabited. Innumerable people, streets, neighborhoods, cities, rivers, animals, fruits, plants, football clubs, companies in Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina and Uruguay are named in Guarani.
Tupi-Guarani placenames in other countries:
The Tupi people were present in almost all of South America, excluding Chile.
Venezuela
Cabure, Aracua
Ara kua ("the hole of the Ara (bird)") ,
Cagua,
Maracay Mbarakaja'y ("
Margay"), Aragua, Taguay, Yaguaratal, Caigua, Carapita, Yaguaracual, Taguapire, Carupano,
Yaguaraparo, Carupe,
Irapa Yrapa ("all streams"), Tabay
Táva'í ("small town"), Uracoa, Aragüita,
Tucupita Tuku pytã ("red lobster"), Guarapo, Chaguaramas
Jaguaráma ("land of jaguars"), Tuja, Cuyagua, Chivacoa, Urucure
Urukure'a ("
Burrowing owl"), Mucuragua, Cuara, Tucani
Tukã'í ("small toucan"), Jacuque,
Churuguara,
Tacuato Taguato ("Falcon"), Aguay, Paraguaná Peninsula
Paragua na ("crown-like or crown-shaped").
-
(Venezuelan states with Tupi-origin names; Apure Apyre ("Extremity, tip, end or border"), Aragua Ara gua ("The macaws Ara (bird)"), La Guaira Guayraka ("Dolphin"), Yaracuy Jarara kúi ("falling jararaca"))
Guyana
Arakaka, Kariakay
Karia'y kaysa ("barrier of the brave") Iguapa
Yguapa ("all coves")
French Guiana
Cayenne, the
francization of the name
Kỹiña ("mean
Cayenne pepper)
Suriname
Paramaribo Parama ývo ("down the sea"). (Referring to the
Caribbean Sea, since although Suriname is part of the
Caribbean, it is near the
Amazon Delta, in the South Atlantic Ocean).
Colombia
Buriticá
Mburiti ka ("from Mauritia flexuosa"),
Ituango, Apía, Ibagué
yvakue ("fallen fruit or fruit peel"), Acuata, Arauca, Tibacuy, Mocoa, El Jagua, Iguambi, Itagüí ("from the rocks"), Yacare, Teranguara, Chachagüí,
Puente Aranda, Catambuco, Aguayo
Panama
Ipetí ''ypetĩ ("duck's beak")
Nicaragua
El Aguay
Aguai ("fruit tree")
Ecuador
Urcuqui, Timbuyacu, Ambuquí, Timbiré
Peru
Aguaytía
Aguai'ty ("plantation of aguai"), Curiyaca, Imambari
Bolivia
Yacuiba, Paraimiri,
Itaimbeguasu, Tatarenda, Saipurú, Capirenda, Itay, Ibamiragera, Carandaytí, Ipaguasú, Abapó, Timboy, Caraparí, Urubichá,
Kuruguakua,
Guanay, Yaguarú and
Rogagua Lake.
Uruguay
Tacuarembó,
Pa'i Sandu,
Chapicuy ("worn out"), Sarandí del Yí
Sarãndy del Y ("bushes of the Yí"),
Balneario Iporá ("beautiful watering place"), El Ombú, Yacuy (Salto), Sarandí del Arapey
Sarãndy del Árape'y ("bushes of the daily tasks river"), Sarandí Grande, Ituzaingó and Aiguá
Notable Tupi people
See also
External links
