Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- A Note on Translation
- A Note on Portuguese Currency, Weights, and Measures
- Maps
- 1 The “Discovery” and First Encounters with Brazil
- 2 The Donatarial System
- 3 Royal Government
- 4 The French Interlude
- 5 Indians, Jesuits, and Colonists
- 6 The World of the Engenhos
- 7 Government and Society in Dutch Brazil
- 8 Burdens of Slavery and Race
- 9 Public and Private Power
- 10 Religion and Society
- 11 Frontiers
- Index
5 - Indians, Jesuits, and Colonists
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- A Note on Translation
- A Note on Portuguese Currency, Weights, and Measures
- Maps
- 1 The “Discovery” and First Encounters with Brazil
- 2 The Donatarial System
- 3 Royal Government
- 4 The French Interlude
- 5 Indians, Jesuits, and Colonists
- 6 The World of the Engenhos
- 7 Government and Society in Dutch Brazil
- 8 Burdens of Slavery and Race
- 9 Public and Private Power
- 10 Religion and Society
- 11 Frontiers
- Index
Summary
During much of the second half of the sixteenth century, Portuguese colonists and Jesuit missionaries struggled over the best way to control, convert, and employ the indigenous inhabitants of Brazil. Both the colonists who, with the development of a sugar industry, began to enslave the native peoples, and the Jesuits, who wanted to bring them into missionary villages, hoped to convince the Crown that they were best suited to bring the Indians under Portuguese authority and make them subjects of the king useful to the colony. The Crown issued laws limiting or prohibiting the enslavement of Indians in 1574, 1595, 1609, and 1680, but there were always considerable loopholes in the legislation. During the struggle over control of the Indians, both colonists and Jesuits became highly critical of their opponents, but both sides also wrote in some detail about the indigenous peoples of Brazil.
The Tupinambás
Of all the indigenous peoples on the coast, the Tupinambá of Bahia received the most attention from early European observers. In this excerpt, the sugar planter, Gabriel Soares de Sousa, presents an extensive and detailed ethnography that demonstrates the curiosity of the early Portuguese observers but also the limitations in describing Native American cultures imposed by European preconceptions and understandings. His account maintains the usual Portuguese distinction between the Tupi-speaking peoples and the tapuyas, or groups that spoke non-Tupi languages. Although he notes the barbarism and cannibalism of the latter, his account also reveals a familiarity and, at times, admiration for their skills.
(From Gabriel Soares de Sousa, Tratado Descretivo do Brasil em 1587, pp. 299–322.)The Original Inhabitants of Bahia
According to information gleaned from Indians of very great age, the first inhabitants of Bahia and the surrounding area were the Tapuyas. They are a very ancient tribe, and more will be revealed about them in due course. They were expelled from Bahia and areas close to the sea by an opposing tribe, the Tupinaés, who swept down on them from inland, attracted by reports about the fertility of the land and about the plentiful seafood that characterize this province. One tribe waged war on the other until finally the Tupinaés defeated and routed the Tapuyas, forcing them to abandon the coastal areas and retreat into the interior without any real chance of recapturing their former territory. The Tupinaés dominated and ruled over that area for many years, continuing to repel attacks launched from inland by the Tapuyas, the original inhabitants of the coast.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Early BrazilA Documentary Collection to 1700, pp. 117 - 197Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009