Indigenous peoples in Brazil ( pt, povos indígenas no Brasil) or Indigenous Brazilians ( pt, indígenas brasileiros, links=no) once comprised an estimated 2000
tribes
The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwide usage of the term in English is in the discipline of anthropology. This definition is contested, in part due to conflic ...
and nations inhabiting what is now the country of
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
, before
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
an contact around 1500.
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus
* lij, Cristoffa C(or)ombo
* es, link=no, Cristóbal Colón
* pt, Cristóvão Colombo
* ca, Cristòfor (or )
* la, Christophorus Columbus. (; born between 25 August and 31 October 1451, died 20 May 1506) was a ...
thought he had reached the
East Indies
The East Indies (or simply the Indies), is a term used in historical narratives of the Age of Discovery. The Indies refers to various lands in the East or the Eastern hemisphere, particularly the islands and mainlands found in and around t ...
, but
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
Vasco da Gama
Vasco da Gama, 1st Count of Vidigueira (; ; c. 1460s – 24 December 1524), was a Portuguese explorer and the first European to reach India by sea.
His initial voyage to India by way of Cape of Good Hope (1497–1499) was the first to link E ...
had already reached India via the
Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by th ...
route, when
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
was colonized by Portugal.
Nevertheless, the word ("Indians") was by then established to designate the
people of the New World and continues to be used in the Portuguese language to designate these people, while a person from
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
is called in order to distinguish the two.
At the time of European contact, some of the
Indigenous people
Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...
were traditionally semi-
nomadic
A nomad is a member of a community without fixed habitation who regularly moves to and from the same areas. Such groups include hunter-gatherers, pastoral nomads (owning livestock), tinkers and trader nomads. In the twentieth century, the popu ...
tribes who subsisted on
hunting
Hunting is the human activity, human practice of seeking, pursuing, capturing, or killing wildlife or feral animals. The most common reasons for humans to hunt are to harvest food (i.e. meat) and useful animal products (fur/hide (skin), hide, ...
,
fishing
Fishing is the activity of trying to catch fish. Fish are often caught as wildlife from the natural environment, but may also be caught from stocked bodies of water such as ponds, canals, park wetlands and reservoirs. Fishing techniques inclu ...
,
gathering
Gather, gatherer, or gathering may refer to:
Anthropology and sociology
*Hunter-gatherer, a person or a society whose subsistence depends on hunting and gathering of wild foods
*Intensive gathering, the practice of cultivating wild plants as a st ...
and migrant
agriculture
Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to ...
. Many tribes suffered extinction as a consequence of the European settlement and many were assimilated into the Brazilian
population
Population typically refers to the number of people in a single area, whether it be a city or town, region, country, continent, or the world. Governments typically quantify the size of the resident population within their jurisdiction using a ...
.
The Indigenous population was decimated by European diseases, declining from a pre-Columbian high of 2 to 3 million to some 300,000 , distributed among 200 tribes. By the 2010
IBGE
The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics ( pt, Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística; IBGE) is the agency responsible for official collection of statistical, geographic, cartographic, geodetic and environmental information ...
census, 817,000 Brazilians classified themselves as
Indigenous
Indigenous may refer to:
*Indigenous peoples
*Indigenous (ecology), presence in a region as the result of only natural processes, with no human intervention
*Indigenous (band), an American blues-rock band
*Indigenous (horse), a Hong Kong racehorse ...
, the same census registered 274
indigenous languages
An indigenous language, or autochthonous language, is a language that is native to a region and spoken by indigenous peoples. This language is from a linguistically distinct community that originated in the area. Indigenous languages are not neces ...
of 304 different indigenous ethnic groups.
On 18 January 2007,
FUNAI
is a Japanese consumer electronics company headquartered in Daitō, Osaka. Apart from producing its own branded electronic products, it is also an OEM providing assembled televisions and video players/recorders to major corporations such as Sh ...
reported 67 remaining
uncontacted tribes
Uncontacted peoples are groups of indigenous peoples living without sustained contact with neighbouring communities and the world community. Groups who decide to remain uncontacted are referred to as indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation. L ...
in
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
, up from 40 known in 2005. With this addition Brazil passed
New Guinea
New Guinea (; Hiri Motu
Hiri Motu, also known as Police Motu, Pidgin Motu, or just Hiri, is a language of Papua New Guinea, which is spoken in surrounding areas of Port Moresby (Capital of Papua New Guinea).
It is a simplified version of ...
, becoming the country with the largest number of uncontacted peoples in the world.
History
Origins
![Parque Indígena do Xingu](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/Parque_Ind%C3%ADgena_do_Xingu.jpg)
Questions about the original
settlement of the Americas
The settlement of the Americas began when Paleolithic hunter-gatherers entered North America from the North Asian Mammoth steppe via the Beringia land bridge, which had formed between northeastern Siberia and western Alaska due to the lowering of ...
has produced a number of hypothetical models. The origins of these Indigenous people are still a matter of dispute among
archaeologists
Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...
.
Migration into the continents
Anthropological
Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavi ...
and
genetic evidence indicates that most Amerindian people descended from migrant peoples from
Siberia
Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part of ...
and
Mongolia
Mongolia; Mongolian script: , , ; lit. "Mongol Nation" or "State of Mongolia" () is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south. It covers an area of , with a population of just 3.3 million, ...
who entered the Americas across the
Bering Strait and along the western coast of North America in at least three separate waves. In Brazil, particularly, most native tribes who were living in the land by 1500 are thought to be descended from the first Siberian wave of migrants, who are believed to have crossed the
Bering Land Bridge
Beringia is defined today as the land and maritime area bounded on the west by the Lena River in Russia; on the east by the Mackenzie River in Canada; on the north by 72 degrees north latitude in the Chukchi Sea; and on the south by the tip of ...
at the end of the last Ice Age, between 13,000 and 17,000 years before the present. A migrant wave would have taken some time after initial entry to reach present-day Brazil, probably entering the
Amazon River
The Amazon River (, ; es, Río Amazonas, pt, Rio Amazonas) in South America is the largest river by discharge volume of water in the world, and the disputed longest river system in the world in comparison to the Nile.
The headwaters of t ...
basin from the Northwest. (The second and third migratory waves from Siberia, which are thought to have generated the
Athabaskan
Athabaskan (also spelled ''Athabascan'', ''Athapaskan'' or ''Athapascan'', and also known as Dene) is a large family of indigenous languages of North America, located in western North America in three areal language groups: Northern, Pacific C ...
,
Aleut
The Aleuts ( ; russian: Алеуты, Aleuty) are the indigenous people of the Aleutian Islands, which are located between the North Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea. Both the Aleut people and the islands are politically divided between the U ...
,
Inuit
Inuit (; iu, ᐃᓄᐃᑦ 'the people', singular: Inuk, , dual: Inuuk, ) are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories ...
, and
Yupik people
The Yupik (plural: Yupiit) (; russian: Юпикские народы) are a group of indigenous or aboriginal peoples of western, southwestern, and southcentral Alaska and the Russian Far East. They are related to the Inuit and Iñupiat. Yup ...
, apparently did not reach farther than the southern
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
and
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
, respectively.)
Genetic studies
= Y-chromosome DNA
=
An analysis of
Amerindian
The Indigenous peoples of the Americas are the inhabitants of the Americas before the arrival of the European settlers in the 15th century, and the ethnic groups who now identify themselves with those peoples.
Many Indigenous peoples of the Am ...
Y-chromosome DNA
In human genetics, a human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup is a haplogroup defined by mutations in the non- recombining portions of DNA from the male-specific Y chromosome (called Y-DNA). Many people within a haplogroup share similar numbers of sh ...
indicates specific clustering of much of the South American population. The
micro-satellite diversity and distributions of the Y lineage specific to South America indicates that certain Amerindian populations have been isolated since the initial colonization of the region.
= Autosomal DNA
=
According to an
autosomal DNA
An autosome is any chromosome that is not a sex chromosome. The members of an autosome pair in a diploid cell have the same morphology, unlike those in allosomal (sex chromosome) pairs, which may have different structures. The DNA in autosomes ...
genetic study from 2012,
Native Americans descend from at least three main migrant waves from Siberia. Most of it is traced back to a single ancestral population, called 'First Americans'. However, those who speak
Inuit languages
The Inuit languages are a closely related group of indigenous American languages traditionally spoken across the North American Arctic and adjacent subarctic, reaching farthest south in Labrador. The related Yupik languages (spoken in western ...
from the
Arctic
The Arctic ( or ) is a polar regions of Earth, polar region located at the northernmost part of Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean, adjacent seas, and parts of Canada (Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut), Danish Realm (Greenla ...
inherited almost half of their ancestry from a second Siberia migrant wave. And those who speak
Na-dene
Na-Dene (; also Nadene, Na-Dené, Athabaskan–Eyak–Tlingit, Tlina–Dene) is a family of Native American languages that includes at least the Athabaskan languages, Eyak, and Tlingit languages. Haida was formerly included, but is now considered ...
, on the other hand, inherited a tenth of their ancestry from a third migrant wave. The initial settling of the Americas was followed by a rapid expansion south down the coast, with little gene flow later, especially in
South America
South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe ...
. One exception to this are the
Chibcha
The Muisca (also called Chibcha) are an indigenous people and culture of the Altiplano Cundiboyacense, Colombia, that formed the Muisca Confederation before the Spanish conquest. The people spoke Muysccubun, a language of the Chibchan langu ...
speakers, whose ancestry comes from both North and South America.
= mtDNA
=
![Menina da etnia Terena](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Menina_da_etnia_Terena.jpg)
Another study, focused on mitochondrial DNA (
mtDNA
Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA or mDNA) is the DNA located in mitochondria, cellular organelles within eukaryotic cells that convert chemical energy from food into a form that cells can use, such as adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Mitochondrial DNA ...
), inherited only through the maternal line,
revealed that the maternal ancestry of the Indigenous people of the Americas traces back to a few founding lineages from Siberia, which would have arrived via the
Bering strait. According to this study, the ancestors of Native Americans likely remained for a time near the
Bering Strait, after which there would have been a rapid movement of settling of the Americas, taking the founding lineages to
South America
South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe ...
.
According to a 2016 study, focused on mtDNA lineages, "a small population entered the Americas via a coastal route around 16.0 ka, following previous isolation in eastern
Beringia
Beringia is defined today as the land and maritime area bounded on the west by the Lena River in Russia; on the east by the Mackenzie River in Canada; on the north by 72 degrees north latitude in the Chukchi Sea; and on the south by the tip ...
for ~2.4 to 9 thousand years after separating from eastern Siberian populations. After rapidly spreading throughout the Americas, limited gene flow in South America resulted in a marked
phylogeographic
Phylogeography is the study of the historical processes that may be responsible for the past to present geographic distributions of genealogical lineages. This is accomplished by considering the geographic distribution of individuals in light of ge ...
structure of populations, which persisted through time. All of the ancient
mitochondrial lineages detected in this study were absent from modern data sets, suggesting a high extinction rate. To investigate this further, we applied a novel principal components multiple logistic regression
test to Bayesian serial coalescent simulations. The analysis supported a scenario in which European colonization caused a substantial loss of pre-Columbian lineages".
= Linguistic comparison with Siberia
=
Linguistic studies have backed up genetic studies, with ancient patterns having been found between the languages spoken in
Siberia
Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part of ...
and those spoken in the Americas.
= Oceanic component in the Amazon region
=
Two 2015 autosomal DNA genetic studies confirmed the Siberian origins of the Natives of the Americas. However an ancient signal of shared ancestry with the
Natives of Australia and Melanesia was detected among the Natives of the
Amazon region
The Amazon basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon River and its tributaries. The Amazon drainage basin covers an area of about , or about 35.5 percent of the South American continent. It is located in the countries of Bolivi ...
. The migration coming out of
Siberia
Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part of ...
would have happened 23,000 years ago.
Archaeological remains
![Índios da etnia Terena2](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/%C3%8Dndios_da_etnia_Terena2.jpg)
Brazilian native people, unlike those in
Mesoamerica
Mesoamerica is a historical region and cultural area in southern North America and most of Central America. It extends from approximately central Mexico through Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and northern Costa Rica. W ...
and the
Andean civilizations
The Andean civilizations were civilization, complex societies of many Indigenous peoples of South America, cultures and peoples mainly developed in the river valleys of the coastal deserts of Peru. They stretched from the Andes of southern Colomb ...
, did not keep written records or erect stone monuments, and the humid climate and acidic soil have destroyed almost all traces of their material culture, including
wood
Wood is a porous and fibrous structural tissue found in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an organic materiala natural composite of cellulose fibers that are strong in tension and embedded in a matrix of lignin th ...
and
bone
A bone is a Stiffness, rigid Organ (biology), organ that constitutes part of the skeleton in most vertebrate animals. Bones protect the various other organs of the body, produce red blood cell, red and white blood cells, store minerals, provid ...
s. Therefore, what is known about the region's history before 1500 has been inferred and reconstructed from small-scale archaeological evidence, such as
ceramics
A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porcelain ...
and stone
arrowhead
An arrowhead or point is the usually sharpened and hardened tip of an arrow, which contributes a majority of the projectile mass and is responsible for impacting and penetrating a target, as well as to fulfill some special purposes such as sign ...
s.
The most conspicuous remains of these societies are very large mounds of discarded
shellfish
Shellfish is a colloquial and fisheries term for exoskeleton-bearing aquatic invertebrates used as food, including various species of molluscs, crustaceans, and echinoderms. Although most kinds of shellfish are harvested from saltwater envir ...
(''sambaquis'') found in some coastal sites which were continuously inhabited for over 5,000 years; and the substantial "black earth" (''
terra preta
''Terra preta'' (, locally , literally "black soil" in Portuguese) is a type of very dark, fertile anthropogenic soil ( anthrosol) found in the Amazon Basin. It is also known as "Amazonian dark earth" or "Indian black earth". In Portuguese its ful ...
'') deposits in several places along the Amazon, which are believed to be ancient garbage dumps (
midden
A midden (also kitchen midden or shell heap) is an old dump for domestic waste which may consist of animal bone, human excrement, botanical material, mollusc shells, potsherds, lithics (especially debitage), and other artifacts and ecofact ...
s). Recent excavations of such deposits in the middle and upper course of the Amazon have uncovered remains of some very large settlements, containing tens of thousands of homes, indicating a complex social and economic structure.
Studies of the wear patterns of the prehistoric inhabitants of coastal Brazil found that the surfaces of
anterior teeth
In dentistry, the term anterior teeth usually refers as a group to the incisors and canine teeth as distinguished from the posterior teeth, which are the premolars and molars. The distinction is one of anterior (front of the body) versus posterio ...
facing the tongue were more worn than surfaces facing the lips, which researchers believe was caused by using teeth to peel and shred abrasive
plants
Plants are predominantly Photosynthesis, photosynthetic eukaryotes of the Kingdom (biology), kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all curr ...
.
Marajoara culture
Marajoara culture
The Marajoara or Marajó culture was an ancient pre-Columbian era civilization that flourished on Marajó island at the mouth of the Amazon River in northern Brazil. In a survey, Charles C. Mann suggests the culture appeared to flourish between ...
flourished on
Marajó island
Marajó () is a large coastal island in the state of Pará, Brazil. It is the main and largest of the islands in the Marajó Archipelago. Marajó Island is separated from the mainland by Marajó Bay, Pará River, smaller rivers (especially M ...
at the mouth of the
Amazon River
The Amazon River (, ; es, Río Amazonas, pt, Rio Amazonas) in South America is the largest river by discharge volume of water in the world, and the disputed longest river system in the world in comparison to the Nile.
The headwaters of t ...
.
Archeologists have found sophisticated
pottery
Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other ceramic materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard and durable form. Major types include earthenware, stoneware and por ...
in their excavations on the island. These pieces are large, and elaborately painted and incised with representations of plants and animals. These provided the first evidence that a complex society had existed on Marajó. Evidence of
mound building
A number of pre-Columbian cultures are collectively termed "Mound Builders". The term does not refer to a specific people or archaeological culture, but refers to the characteristic mound earthworks erected for an extended period of more than 5 ...
further suggests that well-populated, complex and sophisticated settlements developed on this island, as only such settlements were believed capable of such extended projects as major earthworks.
The extent, level of complexity, and resource interactions of the Marajoara culture have been disputed. Working in the 1950s in some of her earliest research, American
Betty Meggers
Betty Jane Meggers (December 5, 1921 – July 2, 2012) was an American archaeologist best known for her work in South America. She was considered influential at the Smithsonian Institution, where she was long associated in research,[Anna Curtenius Roosevelt
Anna Curtenius Roosevelt (born 1946) is an American archaeologist and Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois Chicago. She studies human evolution and long-term human-environment interaction. She is one of the leading American ar ...]
, led excavations and geophysical surveys of the mound Teso dos Bichos. She concluded that the society that constructed the mounds originated on the island itself.
The pre-Columbian culture of Marajó may have developed
social stratification
Social stratification refers to a society's categorization of its people into groups based on socioeconomic factors like wealth, income, race, education, ethnicity, gender, occupation, social status, or derived power (social and political). As ...
and supported a
population
Population typically refers to the number of people in a single area, whether it be a city or town, region, country, continent, or the world. Governments typically quantify the size of the resident population within their jurisdiction using a ...
as large as 100,000 people.
The Native Americans of the Amazon rain forest may have used their method of developing and working in
Terra preta
''Terra preta'' (, locally , literally "black soil" in Portuguese) is a type of very dark, fertile anthropogenic soil ( anthrosol) found in the Amazon Basin. It is also known as "Amazonian dark earth" or "Indian black earth". In Portuguese its ful ...
to make the land suitable for the large-scale
agriculture
Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to ...
needed to support large populations and complex social formations such as
chiefdoms
A chiefdom is a form of hierarchical political organization in non-industrial societies usually based on kinship, and in which formal leadership is monopolized by the legitimate senior members of select families or 'houses'. These elites form a ...
.
Xinguano Civilisation
The
Xingu peoples
Xingu peoples are indigenous peoples of Brazil living near the Xingu River. They have many cultural similarities despite their different ethnologies. Xingu people represent fifteen tribes and all four of Brazil's indigenous language groups, but t ...
built large settlements connected by roads and bridges, often bearing moats. The apex of their development was between 1200 CE to 1600 CE, their population inflating to the tens of thousands.
Native people after the European colonisation
Distribution
![Map of indigenous peoples of Brazil (16th C](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Map_of_indigenous_peoples_of_Brazil_%2816th_C.%29.jpg)
On the eve of the
Portuguese arrival in 1500, the coastal areas of Brazil had two major mega-groups – the ''
Tupi Tupi may refer to:
* Tupi people of Brazil
* Tupi or Tupian languages, spoken in South America
** Tupi language, an extinct Tupian language spoken by the Tupi people
* Tupi oil field off the coast of Brazil
* Tupi Paulista, a Brazilian municipalit ...
'' (speakers of
Tupi–Guarani languages
Tupi–Guarani () is the most widely distributed subfamily of the Tupian languages of South America. It consists of about fifty languages, including Guarani and Old Tupi.
The words ''petunia, jaguar, piranha, ipecac, tapioca, jacaranda, anhing ...
), who dominated practically the entire length of the Brazilian coast, and the ''Tapuia'' (a catch-all term for non-Tupis, usually
Jê language Jê or Gê may refer to:
*Jê languages
*Jê peoples
Jê or Gê are the people who spoke Jê languages of the northern South American Caribbean coast and Brazil. In Brazil, the Jê were found in Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, Bahia, Piaui, Mato Gr ...
people), who resided primarily in the interior. The Portuguese arrived in the final days of a long pre-colonial struggle between Tupis and Tapuias, which had resulted in the defeat and expulsion of the Tapuias from most coastal areas.
Although the coastal Tupi were broken down into sub-tribes, frequently hostile to each other, they were culturally and linguistically homogeneous. The fact that the early Europeans encountered practically the same people and language all along the Brazilian coast greatly simplified early communication and interaction.
Coastal Sequence c. 1500 (north to south):
#
Tupinambá (Tupi, from the
Amazon
Amazon most often refers to:
* Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology
* Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin
* Amazon River, in South America
* Amazon (company), an American multinational technology c ...
delta to
Maranhão
Maranhão () is a state in Brazil. Located in the country's Northeast Region, it has a population of about 7 million and an area of . Clockwise from north, it borders on the Atlantic Ocean for 2,243 km and the states of Piauí, Tocantins and ...
)
#
Tremembé
Tremembé is a municipality in the state of São Paulo in Brazil. It is part of the Metropolitan Region of Vale do Paraíba e Litoral Norte. The population is 47,714 (2020 est.) in an area of 191.09 km². The elevation is 560 m.
A shr ...
(Tapuia, coastal tribe, ranged from
São Luis Island
SAO or Sao may refer to:
Places
* Sao civilisation, in Middle Africa from 6th century BC to 16th century AD
* Sao, a town in Boussé Department, Burkina Faso
* Saco Transportation Center (station code SAO), a train station in Saco, Maine, U. ...
(south Maranhão) to the mouth of the
Acaraú River
The Acaraú River is a river of Ceará state in eastern Brazil.
See also
*List of rivers of Ceará
List of rivers in Ceará (Brazilian State).
The list is arranged by drainage basin from east to west, with respective tributaries indented under ...
in north
Ceará
Ceará (, pronounced locally as or ) is one of the 26 states of Brazil, located in the northeastern part of the country, on the Atlantic coast. It is the eighth-largest Brazilian State by population and the 17th by area. It is also one of the ...
; French traders cultivated an alliance with them)
#
Potiguara
The Potiguara (also Potyguara or Pitiguara) are an indigenous people of Brazil. The Potiguara people live in Paraíba, in the municipalities of Marcação, Baía da Traição and Rio Tinto. Their population numbers sixteen thousand individual ...
(Tupi, literally "shrimp-eaters"; they had a reputation as great canoeists and aggressively expansionist, inhabited a great coastal stretch from
Acaraú River
The Acaraú River is a river of Ceará state in eastern Brazil.
See also
*List of rivers of Ceará
List of rivers in Ceará (Brazilian State).
The list is arranged by drainage basin from east to west, with respective tributaries indented under ...
to
Itamaracá island, covering the modern states of southern Ceará, Rio Grande do Norte and Paraíba.)
#
Tabajara
Tabajara were one of the Tupi tribes of indigenous people who lived on the easternmost portion of the Atlantic coast of northeast Brazil in the period before and during Portuguese colonization. Their territory included portions of the modern s ...
(tiny Tupi tribe between Itamaracá island and
Paraíba River; neighbors and frequent victims of the Potiguara)
#
Caeté
Caeté is a Brazilian municipality located in the state of Minas Gerais. The city belongs to the mesoregion Metropolitana de Belo Horizonte and to the microregion of Belo Horizonte.
The name ''Caeté'' is derived from the local term for some Mar ...
(Tupi group in
Pernambuco
Pernambuco () is a state of Brazil, located in the Northeast region of the country. With an estimated population of 9.6 million people as of 2020, making it seventh-most populous state of Brazil and with around 98,148 km², being the 19 ...
and
Alagoas
Alagoas (, ) is one of the 27 federative units of Brazil and is situated in the eastern part of the Northeast Region. It borders: Pernambuco (N and NW); Sergipe (S); Bahia (SW); and the Atlantic Ocean (E). Its capital is the city of Maceió. It ...
, ranged from
Paraíba River to the
São Francisco River
The São Francisco River (, ) is a large river in Brazil. With a length of , it is the longest river that runs entirely in Brazilian territory, and the fourth longest in South America and overall in Brazil (after the Amazon, the Paraná and t ...
; after killing and eating a Portuguese bishop, they were subjected to Portuguese extermination raids and the remnant pushed into the Pará interior)
#
Tupinambá again (Tupi par excellence, ranged from the São Francisco River to the
Bay of All Saints
The Bay of All Saints ( pt, Baía de Todos os Santos), also known as All Saints' Bay and Todos os Santos Bay, is the principal bay of the Brazilian state of Bahia, to which it gave its name. It sits on the eastern coast of Brazil, surrounding pa ...
, population estimated as high as 100,000; hosted Portuguese castaway
Caramuru
Caramuru (-1557) was the Tupi name of the Portuguese colonist Diogo Álvares Correia, who is notable for being the first European to establish contact with the native Tupinambá population in modern-day Brazil and was instrumental in the early co ...
)
#
Tupiniquim
Tupiniquim (also Tupinã-ki, Topinaquis, Tupinaquis, Tupinanquins, Tupiniquins) are an indigenous peoples of Brazil, indigenous people of Brazil, who now live in three Indigenous territory (Brazil), indigenous territories (''Terras Indígenas'' ...
(Tupi, covered
Bahia
Bahia ( , , ; meaning "bay") is one of the 26 Federative units of Brazil, states of Brazil, located in the Northeast Region, Brazil, Northeast Region of the country. It is the fourth-largest Brazilian state by population (after São Paulo (sta ...
n
discovery coast, from around
Camamu
Camamu is a municipality in the state of Bahia, Brazil. Politically, it is in the Valença subregion of the Sul Baiano region. It is located on the southern coast of Bahia state, the Costa do Dendê (Palm Coast), along the BA-001 highway. The munic ...
to
São Mateus River
The São Mateus River is a river primarily in Espírito Santo state in eastern Brazil., United States National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
Course
The São Mateus River rises in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais in the municipality of São F ...
; these were the first indigenous people encountered by the Portuguese, having met the landing of captain
Pedro Álvares Cabral
Pedro Álvares Cabral ( or ; born Pedro Álvares de Gouveia; c. 1467 or 1468 – c. 1520) was a Portuguese nobleman, military commander, navigator and explorer regarded as the European discoverer of Brazil. He was the first human in ...
in April 1500)
#
Aimoré
The Aimoré ''(Aymore, Aimboré)'' are one of several South American peoples of eastern Brazil called Botocudo in Portuguese (from ''botoque'', a plug), in allusion to the wooden disks or tembetás worn in their lips and ears. Some called thems ...
(Tapuia (Jê) tribe; concentrated on a sliver of coast in modern
Espírito Santo
Espírito Santo (, , ; ) is a state in southeastern Brazil. Its capital is Vitória, and its largest city is Serra. With an extensive coastline, the state hosts some of the country's main ports, and its beaches are significant tourist attra ...
state)
#
Goitacá
The Goitacá (or Goytacazes, among other variant spellings "Waytaquazes" "Ouetacá", "Waitaká") were an indigenous people of Brazil. They are now extinct.
The Goitacá were a "Tapuia" (i.e. non- Tupi) people, one of the few that still remained o ...
(Tapuia tribe; once dominated the coast from
São Mateus River
The São Mateus River is a river primarily in Espírito Santo state in eastern Brazil., United States National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
Course
The São Mateus River rises in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais in the municipality of São F ...
(in Espírito Santo state) down to the
Paraíba do Sul
The Paraíba do Sul (), or simply termed Paraíba, is a river in southeast Brazil. It flows west to northeast from its farthest source at the source of the river Paraitinga to the sea near Campos dos Goytacazes. The river receives its name when ...
river (in
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a b ...
state); hunter-gatherers and fishermen, they were a shy people that avoided all contact with foreigners; estimated at 12,000; they had a fearsome reputation and were eventually annihilated by European colonists)
#
Temiminó
A subdivision of the Tupi-Guarani linguistic families, the Tupi people were one of the largest groups of indigenous Brazilians before its colonization. Scholars believe that while they first settled in the Amazon rainforest, from about 2,90 ...
(small Tupi tribe, centered on
Governador Island
Governador Island (Ilha do Governador, in Portuguese; literally Governor's Island, in English) is the largest island in Guanabara Bay, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It has a population of about 211,018 inhabitants, in a small area of .
Rio de Jane ...
in
Guanabara Bay
Guanabara Bay ( pt, Baía de Guanabara, ) is an oceanic bay located in Southeast Brazil in the state of Rio de Janeiro. On its western shore lie the cities of Rio de Janeiro and Duque de Caxias, and on its eastern shore the cities of Niterói and ...
; frequently at war with the Tamoio around them)
#
Tamoio
A subdivision of the Tupi–Guarani languages, Tupi-Guarani linguistic families, the Tupi people were one of the largest groups of Indigenous peoples in Brazil, indigenous Brazilians before its colonization. Scholars believe that while they fi ...
(Tupi, old branch of the Tupinambá, ranged from the western edge of Guanabara bay to
Ilha Grande
Ilha Grande ( "Big Island") is an island located off the coast of Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil. The island, which is part of the municipality of Angra dos Reis, remains largely undeveloped. For almost a century it was closed by the Brazilian gov ...
)
#
Tupinambá again (Tupi, indistinct from the Tamoio. Inhabited the Paulist coast, from Ilha Grande to
Santos; main enemies of the Tupiniquim to their west. Numbered between six and ten thousand).
#
Tupiniquim
Tupiniquim (also Tupinã-ki, Topinaquis, Tupinaquis, Tupinanquins, Tupiniquins) are an indigenous peoples of Brazil, indigenous people of Brazil, who now live in three Indigenous territory (Brazil), indigenous territories (''Terras Indígenas'' ...
again (Tupi, on the
São Paulo
São Paulo (, ; Portuguese for 'Saint Paul') is the most populous city in Brazil, and is the capital of the state of São Paulo, the most populous and wealthiest Brazilian state, located in the country's Southeast Region. Listed by the GaWC a ...
coast from Santos/Bertioga down to
Cananéia
Cananéia is the southernmost city in the state of São Paulo (state), São Paulo, Brazil, near to where the Tordesilhas Line passed. The population in 2020 was 12,541 and the area is 1,242.010 km². The elevation is 8 m.
The city of Canané ...
; aggressively expansionist, they were recent arrivals imposing themselves on the Paulist coast and the
Piratininga
Piratininga is a municipality ''(município)'' in the state of São Paulo (state) in Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin Americ ...
plateau at the expense of older Tupinambá and Carijó neighbors; hosted Portuguese castaways
João Ramalho
João Ramalho () (1493–1582) was a Portuguese explorer and adventurer known as the first bandeirante. He lived much of his life among Tupiniquim natives in Brazil after he arrived there in 1515. He even became the leader of an Indian village ...
('Tamarutaca') and António Rodrigues in the early 1500s; the Tupiniquim were the first formal allies of the Portuguese colonists, helped establish the Portuguese
Captaincy of São Vicente
The Captaincy of São Vicente (1534–1709) was a land grant and colonial administration in the far southern part of the colonial Portuguese Empire in Colonial Brazil.
History
In 1534 King John III of Portugal granted the Captaincy to Martim A ...
in the 1530s; sometimes called "Guaianá" in old Portuguese chronicles, a Tupi term meaning "friendly" or "allied")
#
Carijó (Guarani (Tupi) tribe, ranged from Cananeia all the way down to
Lagoa dos Patos
Lagoa dos Patos (, , ; English: ''Ducks' Lagoon'') is the largest lagoon in Brazil and the largest coastal lagoon in South America. It is located in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, southern Brazil. It covers an area of , is long and has a maximu ...
(in
Rio Grande do Sul
Rio Grande do Sul (, , ; "Great River of the South") is a Federative units of Brazil, state in the South Region, Brazil, southern region of Brazil. It is the Federative_units_of_Brazil#List, fifth-most-populous state and the List of Brazilian st ...
state); victims of the Tupiniquim and early European slavers; they hosted the mysterious ''
degredado
''Degredado'' is the traditional Portuguese term for an exiled convict, especially between the 15th and 18th centuries.
The term ''degredado'' (etymologically, a 'decreed one', from Latin '' decretum'') is a traditional Portuguese legal term used ...
'' known as the '
Bachelor of Cananeia
A bachelor is a man who is not and has never been married.Bachelors are, in Pitt & al.'s phrasing, "men who live independently, outside of their parents' home and other institutional settings, who are neither married nor cohabitating". ().
Etymo ...
')
#
Charrúa
The Charrúa were an indigenous people or Indigenous Nation of the Southern Cone in present-day Uruguay and the adjacent areas in Argentina ( Entre Ríos) and Brazil ( Rio Grande do Sul). They were a semi-nomadic people who sustained themselve ...
(Tapuia (Jê) tribe in modern
Uruguay
Uruguay (; ), officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay ( es, República Oriental del Uruguay), is a country in South America. It shares borders with Argentina to its west and southwest and Brazil to its north and northeast; while bordering ...
coast, with an aggressive reputation against intruders; killed
Juan Díaz de Solís
Juan Díaz de Solís ( – 20 January 1516) was a 16th-century navigator and explorer. He is also said to be the first European to land on what is now modern day Uruguay.
Biography
His origins are disputed. One document records him as a Portuguese ...
in 1516)
![Debret - Carga de cavalaria guaicuru](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/35/Debret_-_Carga_de_cavalaria_guaicuru.jpg)
With the exception of the
hunter-gatherer
A traditional hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living an ancestrally derived lifestyle in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local sources, especially edible wild plants but also insects, fungi, ...
Goitacases, the coastal Tupi and Tapuia tribes were primarily agriculturalists. The subtropical Guarani cultivated
maize
Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maíz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn (North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. Th ...
, tropical Tupi cultivated manioc (
cassava
''Manihot esculenta'', common name, commonly called cassava (), manioc, or yuca (among numerous regional names), is a woody shrub of the spurge family, Euphorbiaceae, native to South America. Although a perennial plant, cassava is extensively ...
), highland Jês cultivated
peanut
The peanut (''Arachis hypogaea''), also known as the groundnut, goober (US), pindar (US) or monkey nut (UK), is a legume crop grown mainly for its edible Seed, seeds. It is widely grown in the tropics and subtropics, important to both small ...
, as the staple of their diet. Supplementary crops included
bean
A bean is the seed of several plants in the family Fabaceae, which are used as vegetables for human or animal food. They can be cooked in many different ways, including boiling, frying, and baking, and are used in many traditional dishes th ...
s,
sweet potato
The sweet potato or sweetpotato (''Ipomoea batatas'') is a dicotyledonous plant that belongs to the Convolvulus, bindweed or morning glory family (biology), family, Convolvulaceae. Its large, starchy, sweet-tasting tuberous roots are used as a r ...
es, cará (
yam), ''jerimum'' (
pumpkin
A pumpkin is a vernacular term for mature winter squash of species and varieties in the genus ''Cucurbita'' that has culinary and cultural significance but no agreed upon botanical or scientific meaning. The term ''pumpkin'' is sometimes use ...
), and ''cumari'' (
capsicum
''Capsicum'' () is a genus of flowering plants in the Solanum, nightshade family Solanaceae, native to Americas, the Americas, cultivated worldwide for their chili pepper or bell pepper fruit.
Etymology and names
The generic name may come f ...
pepper).
Behind these coasts, the interior of Brazil was dominated primarily by Tapuia (Jê) people, although significant sections of the interior (notably the upper reaches of the
Xingu,
Teles Pires
The Teles Pires ( pt, Rio São Manuel) is a long river in Brazil. The river flows through the state of Mato Grosso and its lower part marks the border between the states of Mato Grosso and Pará. At its mouth it joins Juruena River and together t ...
and
Juruena River
The Juruena River ( pt, Rio Juruena) is a long river in west-central Brazil, in the state of Mato Grosso.
Course
The Juruena originates in the Parecis plateau.
Within Mato Grosso the river defines the eastern boundary of the Igarapés do Juruen ...
s – the area now covered roughly by modern
Mato Grosso
Mato Grosso ( – lit. "Thick Bush") is one of the states of Brazil, the third largest by area, located in the Central-West region. The state has 1.66% of the Brazilian population and is responsible for 1.9% of the Brazilian GDP.
Neighboring ...
state) were the original pre-migration Tupi-Guarani homelands. Besides the Tupi and Tapuia, it is common to identify two other indigenous mega-groups in the interior: the
Caribs
“Carib” may refer to:
People and languages
*Kalina people, or Caribs, an indigenous people of South America
**Carib language, also known as Kalina, the language of the South American Caribs
*Kalinago people, or Island Caribs, an indigenous pe ...
, who inhabited much of what is now northwestern Brazil, including both shores of the
Amazon River
The Amazon River (, ; es, Río Amazonas, pt, Rio Amazonas) in South America is the largest river by discharge volume of water in the world, and the disputed longest river system in the world in comparison to the Nile.
The headwaters of t ...
up to the delta and the
Nuaraque group, whose constituent tribes inhabited several areas, including most of the upper Amazon (west of what is now
Manaus
Manaus () is the capital and largest city of the Brazilian state of Amazonas. It is the seventh-largest city in Brazil, with an estimated 2020 population of 2,219,580 distributed over a land area of about . Located at the east center of the s ...
) and also significant pockets in modern
Amapá
Amapá () is one of the 26 states of Brazil. It is in the northern region of Brazil. It is the second least populous state and the eighteenth largest by area. Located in the far northern part of the country, Amapá is bordered clockwise by Fr ...
and
Roraima
Roraima (, ) is one of the 26 states of Brazil. Located in the country's North Region, it is the northernmost and most geographically and logistically isolated state in Brazil. It is bordered by the state of Pará to the southeast, Amazonas ...
states.
The names by which the different Tupi tribes were recorded by Portuguese and French authors of the 16th century are poorly understood. Most do not seem to be proper names, but descriptions of relationship, usually familial – e.g. ''tupi'' means "first father", ''tupinambá'' means "relatives of the ancestors", ''tupiniquim'' means "side-neighbors", ''tamoio'' means "grandfather", ''temiminó'' means "grandson", ''tabajara'' means "in-laws" and so on. Some etymologists believe these names reflect the ordering of the migration waves of Tupi people from the interior to the coasts, e.g. first Tupi wave to reach the coast being the "grandfathers" (Tamoio), soon joined by the "relatives of the ancients" (Tupinamba), by which it could mean relatives of the Tamoio, or a Tamoio term to refer to relatives of the old Tupi back in the upper Amazon basin. The "grandsons" (Temiminó) might be a splinter. The "side-neighbors" (Tupiniquim) meant perhaps recent arrivals, still trying to jostle their way in. However, by 1870 the Tupi tribes population had declined to 250,000 indigenous people and by 1890 had diminished to an approximate 100,000.
First contacts
![Dança dos Tapuias](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/Dan%C3%A7a_dos_Tapuias.jpg)
When the
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
explorers first arrived in Brazil in April 1500, they found, to their astonishment, a wide coastline rich in resources, teeming with hundreds of thousands of Indigenous people living in a "paradise" of natural riches.
Pêro Vaz de Caminha
Pêro Vaz de Caminha (c. 1450 – 15 December 1500; , ; also spelled Pedro Vaz de Caminha) was a Portuguese knight that accompanied Pedro Álvares Cabral to India in 1500 as a secretary to the royal factory. Caminha wrote the detailed official re ...
, the official scribe of
Pedro Álvares Cabral
Pedro Álvares Cabral ( or ; born Pedro Álvares de Gouveia; c. 1467 or 1468 – c. 1520) was a Portuguese nobleman, military commander, navigator and explorer regarded as the European discoverer of Brazil. He was the first human in ...
, the commander of the discovery fleet which landed in the present state of
Bahia
Bahia ( , , ; meaning "bay") is one of the 26 Federative units of Brazil, states of Brazil, located in the Northeast Region, Brazil, Northeast Region of the country. It is the fourth-largest Brazilian state by population (after São Paulo (sta ...
, wrote a letter to the King of Portugal describing in glowing terms the beauty of the land.
In "Histoire des découvertes et conquestes des Portugais dans le Nouveau Monde", Lafiatau described the natives as people who wore no clothing but rather painted their whole bodies with red. Their ears, noses, lips and cheeks were pierced. The men would shave the front, the top of the head and over the ears, while the women would typically wear their hair loose or in braids. Both men and women would accessorize themselves with noisy porcelain collars and bracelets, feathers dried fruits. He describes the ritualistic nature of how they practiced cannibalism, and he even mentions the importance of the role of the women in a household.
At the time of European arrival, the territory of current day Brazil had as many as 2,000 nations and tribes (which equated to 11 million Indians). During the first 100 years of contact, the Indian population was reduced by 90%. This was mainly due to disease and illness spread by the colonists, furthered by slavery and European-brought violence. The indigenous people were traditionally mostly semi-nomadic tribes who subsisted on hunting, fishing, gathering, and migrant agriculture. For hundreds of years, the indigenous people of Brazil lived a semi-nomadic life, managing the forests to meet their needs. When the Portuguese arrived in 1500, the natives were living mainly on the coast and along the banks of major rivers. Initially, the Europeans saw native people as
noble savage
A noble savage is a literary stock character who embodies the concept of the indigene, outsider, wild human, an "other" who has not been "corrupted" by civilization, and therefore symbolizes humanity's innate goodness. Besides appearing in man ...
s, and
miscegenation
Miscegenation ( ) is the interbreeding of people who are considered to be members of different races. The word, now usually considered pejorative, is derived from a combination of the Latin terms ''miscere'' ("to mix") and ''genus'' ("race") ...
of the population began right away. Portuguese claims of tribal warfare,
cannibalism
Cannibalism is the act of consuming another individual of the same species as food. Cannibalism is a common ecological interaction in the animal kingdom and has been recorded in more than 1,500 species. Human cannibalism is well documented, b ...
, and the pursuit of Amazonian
brazilwood
''Paubrasilia echinata'' is a species of flowering plant in the legume family, Fabaceae, that is endemic to the Atlantic Forest of Brazil. It is a Brazilian timber tree commonly known as Pernambuco wood or brazilwood ( pt, pau-de-pernambuco, ; ...
for its treasured red dye convinced the Portuguese that they should "civilize" the natives (originally, colonists called Brazil
Terra de Santa Cruz
The name ''Brazil'' is a shortened form of ''Terra do Brasil'' ("Land of Brazil"), a reference to the brazilwood tree. The name was given in the early 16th century to the territories leased to the merchant consortium led by Fernão de Loronha, to e ...
, until later it acquired its name (see
List of meanings of countries' names
This list covers English-language country names with their etymologies. Some of these include notes on indigenous names and their etymologies. Countries in ''italics'' are endonyms or no longer exist as sovereign political entities.
A
Afghan ...
) from
brazilwood
''Paubrasilia echinata'' is a species of flowering plant in the legume family, Fabaceae, that is endemic to the Atlantic Forest of Brazil. It is a Brazilian timber tree commonly known as Pernambuco wood or brazilwood ( pt, pau-de-pernambuco, ; ...
). But the Portuguese, like the Spanish in their North American territories, had brought diseases with them against which many Indians were helpless due to lack of immunity.
Measles
Measles is a highly contagious infectious disease caused by measles virus. Symptoms usually develop 10–12 days after exposure to an infected person and last 7–10 days. Initial symptoms typically include fever, often greater than , cough, ...
,
smallpox
Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by variola virus (often called smallpox virus) which belongs to the genus Orthopoxvirus. The last naturally occurring case was diagnosed in October 1977, and the World Health Organization (WHO) c ...
,
tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, in ...
, and
influenza
Influenza, commonly known as "the flu", is an infectious disease caused by influenza viruses. Symptoms range from mild to severe and often include fever, runny nose, sore throat, muscle pain, headache, coughing, and fatigue. These symptoms ...
killed tens of thousands. The diseases spread quickly along the indigenous trade routes, and it is likely that whole tribes were annihilated without ever coming in direct contact with Europeans.
Slavery and the bandeiras
The mutual feeling of wonderment and good relationship was to end in the succeeding years.
The Portuguese
colonist
A settler is a person who has migrated to an area and established a permanent residence there, often to colonize the area.
A settler who migrates to an area previously uninhabited or sparsely inhabited may be described as a pioneer.
Settle ...
s, all males, started to have children with female Amerindians, creating a new generation of mixed-race people who spoke Indian languages (a
Tupi language
Old Tupi, Ancient Tupi or Classical Tupi (also spelled as Tupí) is an extinct Tupian language which was spoken by the aboriginal Tupi people of Brazil, mostly those who inhabited coastal regions in South and Southeast Brazil. It belongs to the ...
called
Nheengatu
The Nheengatu language (Tupi: , nheengatu rionegrino: ''yẽgatu'', nheengatu tradicional: ''nhẽẽgatú'' e nheengatu tapajoawara: ''nheẽgatu''), often written Nhengatu, is an indigenous language of the Tupi-Guarani family, being then deri ...
). The children of these Portuguese men and Indian women formed the majority of the population. Groups of fierce pathfinders organized expeditions called "
bandeiras
The ''Bandeirantes'' (), literally "flag-carriers", were slavers, explorers, adventurers, and fortune hunters in early Colonial Brazil. They are largely responsible for Brazil's great expansion westward, far beyond the Tordesillas Line of 1494 ...
" (flags) into the backlands to claim them for the Portuguese crown and to look for
gold
Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile met ...
and
precious stone
Precious may refer to:
Music
* Precious (group), a British female pop group
Albums
* ''Precious'' (Chanté Moore album), 1992
* ''Precious'' (Cubic U album), 1998
* ''Precious'' (Ours album), 2002
* ''Precious'' (Precious album), 2000
* ...
s.
Intending to profit from the
sugar trade
Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. Simple sugars, also called monosaccharides, include glucose, fructose, and galactose. Compound sugars, also called disaccharides or double s ...
, the Portuguese decided to plant
sugar cane
Sugarcane or sugar cane is a species of (often hybrid) tall, perennial grass (in the genus ''Saccharum'', tribe Andropogoneae) that is used for sugar production. The plants are 2–6 m (6–20 ft) tall with stout, jointed, fibrous stalks t ...
in Brazil, and to use indigenous slaves as the workforce, as the Spanish colonies were successfully doing. But the indigenous people were hard to capture. They were soon infected by diseases brought by the Europeans against which they had no natural
immunity
Immunity may refer to:
Medicine
* Immunity (medical), resistance of an organism to infection or disease
* ''Immunity'' (journal), a scientific journal published by Cell Press
Biology
* Immune system
Engineering
* Radiofrequence immunity desc ...
, and began dying in great numbers.
The Jesuits
Jesuit
, image = Ihs-logo.svg
, image_size = 175px
, caption = ChristogramOfficial seal of the Jesuits
, abbreviation = SJ
, nickname = Jesuits
, formation =
, founders ...
priests arrived with the first
Governor General
Governor-general (plural ''governors-general''), or governor general (plural ''governors general''), is the title of an office-holder. In the context of governors-general and former British colonies, governors-general are appointed as viceroy t ...
as clerical assistants to the colonists, with the intention of converting the indigenous people to
Catholicism
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
. They presented arguments in support of the notion that the indigenous people should be considered
human
Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture, ...
, and extracted a
Papal bull (''
Sublimis Deus
''Sublimis Deus'' (English: ''The sublime God''; erroneously cited as ''Sublimus Dei'' and occasionally as ''Sic Dilexit'') is a bull promulgated by Pope Paul III on June 2, 1537, which forbids the enslavement of the indigenous peoples of the Ame ...
'') proclaiming that, irrespective of their beliefs, they should be considered fully rational human beings, with rights to freedom and private property, who must not be enslaved.
![Iracema (Antonio Parreiras, 1909)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Iracema_%28Antonio_Parreiras%2C_1909%29.jpg)
Jesuit priests such as fathers
José de Anchieta
José de Anchieta y Díaz de Clavijo (Joseph of Anchieta) (19 March 1534 – 9 June 1597) was a Spanish Jesuit missionary to the Portuguese colony of Brazil in the second half of the 16th century. A highly influential figure in Brazil's hi ...
and
Manuel da Nóbrega
Manuel da Nóbrega (old spelling ''Manoel da Nóbrega'') (18 October 1517 – 18 October 1570) was a Portuguese Jesuit priest and first Provincial of the Society of Jesus in colonial Brazil. Together with José de Anchieta, he was very influent ...
studied and recorded their language and founded mixed settlements, such as
São Paulo dos Campos de Piratininga
São Paulo dos Campos de Piratininga (''Saint Paul of the Fields of Piratininga'' in Portuguese) was the village that developed as São Paulo, Brazil in the region known as Campos de Piratininga. It was founded as a religious mission and a J ...
, where colonists and Indians lived side by side, speaking the same ''
Língua Geral
Língua Geral (, ''General Language'') is the name of two distinct lingua francas, spoken in Brazil: the '' Língua Geral Paulista'' (''Tupi Austral'', or Southern Tupi), which was spoken in the region of Paulistania but is now dead, and the ''Lí ...
'' (common language), and freely intermarried. They began also to establish more remote villages peopled only by "civilized" Indians, called ''Missions'', or
reductions
Reductions ( es, reducciones, also called ; , pl. ) were settlements created by Spanish rulers and Roman Catholic missionaries in Spanish America and the Spanish East Indies (the Philippines). In Portuguese-speaking Latin America, such redu ...
(see the article on the
Guarani people Guarani, Guaraní or Guarany may refer to
Ethnography
* Guaraní people, an indigenous people from South America's interior (Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Bolivia)
* Guaraní language, or Paraguayan Guarani, an official language of Paraguay
* ...
for more details).
By the middle of the 16th century, Catholic Jesuit priests, at the behest of Portugal's monarchy, had established missions throughout the country's colonies. They worked to both Europeanize them and convert them to Catholicism. Some historians argue that the Jesuits provided a period of relative stability for the Indians.
Indeed, the Jesuits argued against using indigenous Brazilians for slave labour. However, the Jesuits still contributed to European imperialism. Many historians regard Jesuit involvement to be an ethnocide of indigenous culture where the Jesuit's attempted to 'Europeanise' the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil.
In the mid-1770s, the indigenous peoples' fragile co-existence with the colonists was again threatened. Because of a complex diplomatic web between
Portugal
Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...
,
Spain
, image_flag = Bandera de España.svg
, image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg
, national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond")
, national_anthem = (English: "Royal March")
, i ...
and the
Vatican
Vatican may refer to:
Vatican City, the city-state ruled by the pope in Rome, including St. Peter's Basilica, Sistine Chapel, Vatican Museum
The Holy See
* The Holy See, the governing body of the Catholic Church and sovereign entity recognized ...
, the Jesuits were expelled from Brazil and the missions confiscated and sold.
By 1800, the population of
Colonial Brazil
Colonial Brazil ( pt, Brasil Colonial) comprises the period from 1500, with the arrival of the Portuguese, until 1815, when Brazil was elevated to a kingdom in union with Portugal as the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves. Durin ...
had reached approximately 2.21 million, among whom only approximately 100,858 were indigenous. By 1850, that number had dwindled to an estimated 52,126 people, out of 1.86 million.
Wars
![Debret2](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/Debret2.jpg)
A number of wars between several tribes, such as the
Tamoio Confederation
The military history of Brazil comprises centuries of armed actions in the territory encompassing modern Brazil, and the role of the Brazilian Armed Forces in conflicts and peacekeeping worldwide. For several hundreds of years, the area was the s ...
, and the Portuguese ensued, sometimes with the Indians siding with enemies of Portugal, such as the French, in the famous episode of
France Antarctique
France Antarctique (formerly also spelled ''France antartique'') was a French colony in Rio de Janeiro, in modern-day Brazil, which existed between 1555 and 1567, and had control over the coast from Rio de Janeiro to Cabo Frio. The colony quickly ...
in
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a b ...
, sometimes allying themselves to Portugal in their fight against other tribes. At approximately the same period, a German soldier,
Hans Staden
Hans Staden (c. 1525 – c. 1576) was a German soldier and explorer who voyaged to South America in the middle of the sixteenth century, where he was captured by the Tupinambá people of Brazil. He managed to survive and return safe to Europe. In ...
, was captured by the
Tupinambá and released after a while. He described it in a famous book, ''Warhaftige Historia und beschreibung eyner Landtschafft der Wilden Nacketen, Grimmigen Menschfresser-Leuthen in der Newenwelt America gelegen'' (True Story and Description of a Country of Wild, Naked, Grim, Man-eating People in the New World, America) (1557)
There are various documented accounts of
smallpox
Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by variola virus (often called smallpox virus) which belongs to the genus Orthopoxvirus. The last naturally occurring case was diagnosed in October 1977, and the World Health Organization (WHO) c ...
being
knowingly used as a biological weapon by New Brazilian villagers that wanted to get rid of nearby Indian tribes (not always aggressive ones). The most "classical", according to Anthropologist, Mércio Pereira Gomes, happened in Caxias, in south Maranhão, where local farmers, wanting more land to extend their cattle farms, gave clothing owned by ill villagers (that normally would be burned to prevent further infection) to the Timbira. The clothing infected the entire tribe, and they had neither immunity nor cure. Similar things happened in other villages throughout South America.
The rubber trade
The 1840s brought trade and wealth to the
Amazon
Amazon most often refers to:
* Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology
* Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin
* Amazon River, in South America
* Amazon (company), an American multinational technology c ...
. The process for
vulcanizing
Vulcanization (British: Vulcanisation) is a range of processes for hardening rubbers. The term originally referred exclusively to the treatment of natural rubber with sulfur, which remains the most common practice. It has also grown to includ ...
rubber
Rubber, also called India rubber, latex, Amazonian rubber, ''caucho'', or ''caoutchouc'', as initially produced, consists of polymers of the organic compound isoprene, with minor impurities of other organic compounds. Thailand, Malaysia, and ...
was developed, and worldwide demand for the product skyrocketed. The best
rubber tree
''Hevea brasiliensis'', the Pará rubber tree, ''sharinga'' tree, seringueira, or most commonly, rubber tree or rubber plant, is a flowering plant belonging to the spurge family Euphorbiaceae originally native to the Amazon basin, but is now pa ...
s in the world grew in the Amazon, and thousands of rubber tappers began to work the plantations. When the Indians proved to be a difficult labor force, peasants from surrounding areas were brought into the region. In a dynamic that continues to this day, the indigenous population was at constant odds with the peasants, who the Indians felt had invaded their lands in search of treasure.
The legacy of Cândido Rondon
![Cândido Rondon](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/C%C3%A2ndido_Rondon.jpg)
In the 20th century, the Brazilian Government adopted a more humanitarian attitude and offered official protection to the indigenous people, including the establishment of the first indigenous reserves. Fortune brightened for the Indians around the turn of the 20th century when
Cândido Rondon
Marshal Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon (5 May 1865 – 19 January 1958) was a Brazilian military officer most famous for his telegraph commission and exploration of Mato Grosso and the Western Amazon Basin, as well as his lifelong support f ...
, a man of both
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
and
Bororo
The Bororo are indigenous people of Brazil, living in the state of Mato Grosso. They also extended into Bolivia and the Brazilian state of Goiás. The Western Bororo live around the Jauru and Cabaçal rivers. The Eastern Bororo ( Orarimogodoge ...
ancestry, and an explorer and progressive officer in the Brazilian army, began working to gain the Indians' trust and establish peace. Rondon, who had been assigned to help bring telegraph communications into the Amazon, was a curious and natural explorer. In 1910, he helped found the ''
Serviço de Proteção aos Índios – SPI'' (Service for the Protection of Indians, today the FUNAI, or ''
Fundação Nacional do Índio
Fundação Nacional do Índio (, ''National Indian Foundation'') or FUNAI is a Brazilian governmental protection agency for Amerindian interests and their culture.
Original founding as Indian Protection Service
In 1910, the Indian Protecti ...
'', National Foundation for Indians). SPI was the first federal agency charged with protecting Indians and preserving their culture. In 1914, Rondon accompanied
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt Jr. ( ; October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919), often referred to as Teddy or by his initials, T. R., was an American politician, statesman, soldier, conservationist, naturalist, historian, and writer who served as the 26t ...
on Roosevelt's famous expedition to map the Amazon and discover new species. During these travels, Rondon was appalled to see how settlers and developers treated the indigenes, and he became their lifelong friend and protector.
Rondon, who died in 1958, is a national hero in Brazil. The Brazilian state of
Rondônia
Rondônia () is one of the 26 states of Brazil, located in the northern subdivision of the country (central-western part). To the west is a short border with the state of Acre, to the north is the state of Amazonas, in the east is Mato Grosso, ...
is named after him.
SPI failure and FUNAI
![Indígena da etnia Tapirapé](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Ind%C3%ADgena_da_etnia_Tapirap%C3%A9.jpg)
After Rondon's pioneering work, the SPI was turned over to bureaucrats and military officers and its work declined after 1957. The new officials did not share Rondon's deep commitment to the Indians. SPI sought to address tribal issues by transforming the tribes into mainstream Brazilian society. The lure of reservation riches enticed cattle ranchers and settlers to continue their assault on Indians lands – and the SPI eased the way. Between 1900 and 1967, an estimated 98
indigenous
Indigenous may refer to:
*Indigenous peoples
*Indigenous (ecology), presence in a region as the result of only natural processes, with no human intervention
*Indigenous (band), an American blues-rock band
*Indigenous (horse), a Hong Kong racehorse ...
tribes were wiped out.
Mostly due to the efforts of the
Villas-Bôas brothers
Orlando (1914–2002) and his brothers Cláudio (1916–1998) and Leonardo Villas-Bôas (1918–1961) were Brazilian brothers who worked in indigenous activism. In 1961 they succeeded in getting the entire upper Xingu legally protected, making it ...
, Brazil's first Indian reserve, the
Xingu National Park
The Xingu Indigenous Park (, pronounced ) is an indigenous territory of Brazil, first created in 1961 as a national park in the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil. Its official purposes are to protect the environment and the several tribes of Xingu in ...
, was established by the Federal Government in 1961.
During the social and political upheaval in the 1960s, reports of mistreatment of Indians increasingly reached
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
's
urban center
An urban area, built-up area or urban agglomeration is a human settlement with a high population density and infrastructure of built environment. Urban areas are created through urbanization and are categorized by urban morphology as cities, t ...
s and began to affect Brazilian thinking. In 1967, following the publication of the ''
Figueiredo Report
The Figueiredo report is an investigative report by public prosecutor Jader de Figueiredo Correia, published in 1967, detailing the crimes committed by the Indigenous Protection Service (Serviço de Proteção ao Índio) against the native peoples ...
'', commissioned by the Ministry of the Interior, the military government launched an investigation into SPI. It soon came to light that the SPI was corrupt and failing to protect natives, their lands, and, culture. The 5,000-page report catalogued atrocities including slavery, sexual abuse, torture, and mass murder.
It has been charged that agency officials, in collaboration with land speculators, were systematically slaughtering the Indians by intentionally circulating disease-laced clothes. Criminal prosecutions followed, and the SPI was disbanded. The same year the government established Fundação Nacional do Índio (''National Indian Foundation''), known as FUNAI which is responsible for protecting the interests, cultures, and rights of the Brazilian indigenous populations. Some tribes have become significantly integrated into Brazilian society. The unacculturated tribes which have been contacted by FUNAI, are supposed to be protected and accommodated within Brazilian society in varying degrees. By 1987 it was recognized that unessential contact with the tribes was causing illness and social disintegration. The uncontacted tribes are now supposed to be protected from intrusion and interference in their life style and territory.
However, the exploitation of
rubber
Rubber, also called India rubber, latex, Amazonian rubber, ''caucho'', or ''caoutchouc'', as initially produced, consists of polymers of the organic compound isoprene, with minor impurities of other organic compounds. Thailand, Malaysia, and ...
and other Amazonic natural resources has led to a new cycle of invasion, expulsion, massacres and death, which continues to this day.
The military government
Also in 1964, in a seismic political shift, the Brazilian military
took control of the government and abolished all existing political parties, creating a two-party system. For the next two decades, Brazil was ruled by a series of generals. The country's mantra was "Brazil, the Country of the Future," which the military government used as justification for a giant push into the Amazon to exploit its resources, thereby beginning to transform Brazil into one of the leading economies of the world. Construction began on a transcontinental highway across the Amazon basin, aimed to encourage migration to the
Amazon
Amazon most often refers to:
* Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology
* Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin
* Amazon River, in South America
* Amazon (company), an American multinational technology c ...
and to open up the region to more trade. With funding from
World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects. The World Bank is the collective name for the Interna ...
, thousands of square miles of forest were cleared without regard for reservation status. After the highway projects came giant hydroelectric projects, then swaths of forest were cleared for cattle ranches. As a result, reservation lands suffered massive deforestation and flooding. The public works projects attracted very few migrants, but those few – and largely poor – settlers brought new diseases that further devastated the Indians population.
Contemporary situation
![Índios isolados no Acre 12](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/%C3%8Dndios_isolados_no_Acre_12.jpg)
The
1988 Brazilian Constitution
The Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil ( pt, Constituição da República Federativa do Brasil) is the supreme law of Brazil. It is the foundation and source of the legal authority underlying the existence of Brazil and the feder ...
recognizes indigenous people' right to pursue their traditional ways of life and to the permanent and exclusive possession of their "traditional lands", which are demarcated as
Indigenous Territories.
[Federal Constitution of Brazil]
Chapter VII Article 231
. In practice, however, Brazil's indigenous people still face a number of external threats and challenges to their continued existence and cultural heritage.
The process of demarcation is slow—often involving protracted legal battles—and
FUNAI
is a Japanese consumer electronics company headquartered in Daitō, Osaka. Apart from producing its own branded electronic products, it is also an OEM providing assembled televisions and video players/recorders to major corporations such as Sh ...
do not have sufficient resources to enforce the legal protection on indigenous land.
Since the 1980s there has been a boom in the exploitation of the Amazon Rainforest for mining, logging and cattle ranching, posing a severe threat to the region's indigenous population. Settlers illegally encroaching on indigenous land continue to destroy the environment necessary for indigenous people' traditional ways of life, provoke violent confrontations and spread disease.
People such as the
Akuntsu
The Akuntsu (also known as Akunt'su or Akunsu) are an indigenous people of Rondônia, Brazil. Their land is part of the Rio Omerê Indigenous Territory, a small indigenous territory which is also inhabited by a group of Kanoê. The Akuntsu were v ...
and
Kanoê
The Kanoê (also as the Canoe, Kapixaná and Kapixanã) are an indigenous people of southern Rondônia, Brazil, near the Bolivian border. There are two major groups of Kanoê: one residing in the region of the Guaporé River and another in the Rio ...
have been brought to the brink of extinction within the last three decades.
Deforestation for mining also affects the daily lives of indigenous tribes in Brazil.
For instance, the Munduruku Indians have higher levels of mercury poisoning due to gold production in the area.
On 13 November 2012, the national indigenous people association from Brazil APIB submitted to the United Nation a human rights document that complaints about new proposed laws in Brazil that would further undermine their rights if approved.
Much of the language has been incorporated into the official
Brazilian Portuguese
Brazilian Portuguese (' ), also Portuguese of Brazil (', ) or South American Portuguese (') is the set of varieties of the Portuguese language native to Brazil and the most influential form of Portuguese worldwide. It is spoken by almost all of ...
language. For example, 'Carioca' the word used to describe people born in the city of Rio de Janeiro, is from the indigenous word for 'house of the white (people)'.
![Fulni-ô fala da cultura do seu povo](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/Fulni-%C3%B4_fala_da_cultura_do_seu_povo.jpg)
Within hours of taking office in January 2019, Bolsonaro made two major changes to FUNAI, affecting its responsibility to identify and demarcate
indigenous lands: He moved FUNAI from under the Ministry of Justice to be under the newly created ''Ministry of Human Rights, Family and Women,'' and he delegated the identification of the traditional habitats of indigenous people and their designation as inviolable protected territories − a task attributed to FUNAI by the constitution – to the Agriculture Ministry.
He argued that those territories have tiny isolated populations and proposed to integrate them into the larger Brazilian society. Critics feared that such integration would lead the Brazilian natives to suffer
cultural assimilation
Cultural assimilation is the process in which a minority group or culture comes to resemble a society's majority group or assume the values, behaviors, and beliefs of another group whether fully or partially.
The different types of cultural assi ...
. Several months later, Brazil's National Congress overturned these changes.
The
European Union–Mercosur free trade agreement
The European Union–Mercosur free trade agreement is a proposed free trade agreement on which the European Union and Mercosur reached agreement in principle in 2019. The planned deal was announced on 28 June at the 2019 G20 Osaka summit after tw ...
, which would form one of the world's largest free trade areas, has been denounced by environmental activists and indigenous rights campaigners. The fear is that the deal could lead to more
deforestation of the Amazon rainforest
The Amazon rainforest is the largest rainforest in the world, covering an area of 3,000,000 km2 (2,316,612.95 square miles). It represents over half of the planet's rainforests and comprises the largest and most biodiverse tract of tropica ...
as it expands market access to Brazilian beef.
A 2019 report by the Indigenous Missionary Council on Violence against Indigenous Peoples in Brazil documented an increase in the number of invasions of indigenous lands by loggers, miners and land grabbers, recording 160 cases in the first nine months of 2019, up from 96 cases in the entirety of 2017. The number of reported killings in 2018, 135, had also increased from 110 recorded in 2017.
On 5 May 2020, post HRW's investigation, Brazilian lawmakers released a report examining the violence against Indigenous people, Afro-Brazilian rural communities and others engaged in illegal logging, mining, and land grabbing.
Indigenous Rights Movements
Urban Rights Movement
The urban rights movement is a recent development in the rights of indigenous peoples. Brazil has one of the highest income inequalities in the world, and much of that population includes indigenous tribes migrating toward urban areas both by choice and by displacement. Beyond the urban rights movement, studies have shown that the suicide risk among the indigenous population is 8.1 times higher than the non-indigenous population.
Many indigenous rights movements have been created through the meeting of many indigenous tribes in urban areas. For example, in Barcelos, an indigenous rights movement arose because of "local migratory circulation." This is how many alliances form to create a stronger network for mobilization. Indigenous populations also living in urban areas have struggles regarding work. They are pressured into doing cheap labor. Programs like Oxfam have been used to help indigenous people gain partnerships to begin grassroots movements. Some of their projects overlap with environmental activism as well.
Many Brazilian youths are mobilizing through the increased social contact, since some indigenous tribes stay isolated while others adapt to the change. Access to education also affects these youths, and therefore, more groups are mobilizing to fight for indigenous rights.
Environmental and Territorial Rights Movement
Dynamics favouring recognition
Many of the indigenous tribes' rights and rights claims parallel the environmental and territorial rights movement. Although indigenous people have gained 21% of the Brazilian Amazon as part of indigenous land, many issues still affect the sustainability of
Indigenous territories today.
Climate change is one issue that indigenous tribes attribute as a reason to keep their territory.
Some indigenous peoples and conservation organizations in the Brazilian Amazon have formed alliances, such as the alliance of the A'ukre Kayapo village and the Instituto SocioAmbiental (ISA) environmental organization. They focus on environmental, education and developmental rights. For example,
Amazon Watch
Amazon Watch is a nonprofit organization founded in 1996, and based in Oakland, California, it works to protect the rainforest and advance the rights of indigenous peoples in the Amazon Basin. It partners with indigenous and environmental organ ...
collaborates with various indigenous organizations in Brazil to fight for both territorial and environmental rights. "Access to natural resources by indigenous and peasant communities in Brazil has been considerably less and much more insecure," so activists focus on more traditional conservation efforts, and expanding territorial rights for indigenous people.
Territorial rights for the indigenous populations of Brazil largely fall under socio-economic issues. There have been violent conflicts regarding rights to land between the government and the indigenous population,
and political rights have done little to stop them. There have been movements of the landless (MST) that help keep land away from the elite living in Brazil.
Dynamics opposing recognition
Environmentalists and indigenous peoples have been viewed as opponents to economic growth and barriers to development due to the fact that much of the land that indigenous tribes live on could be used for development projects, including dams, and more industrialization.
Groups self-identifying as indigenous may lack intersubjective recognition, thus claims to TIs, which can involve the demarcation of large areas of territory and threaten to dispossess established local communities, can be challenged by others, even neighbouring kinship groups, on the grounds that those making the claims are not 'real Indians', due to factors such as historical intermarriage (
miscegenation
Miscegenation ( ) is the interbreeding of people who are considered to be members of different races. The word, now usually considered pejorative, is derived from a combination of the Latin terms ''miscere'' ("to mix") and ''genus'' ("race") ...
),
cultural assimilation
Cultural assimilation is the process in which a minority group or culture comes to resemble a society's majority group or assume the values, behaviors, and beliefs of another group whether fully or partially.
The different types of cultural assi ...
, and stigma against self-identifying as indigenous. Claims to TIs can also be opposed by major landowning families from the rubber era, or by the peasants that work the land, who may instead prefer to support the concept of the
extractive reserve
An extractive reserve ( pt, Reserva Extrativista or RESEX) is a type of sustainable use protected area in Brazil.
The land is publicly owned, but the people who live there have the right to traditional extractive practices, such as hunting, fishi ...
.
Education
The Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous History and Culture Law (Law No. 11.645/2008) is a
Brazilian law
The law of Brazil is based on statutes and, partly and more recently, a mechanism called ''súmulas vinculantes''. It derives mainly from the civil law systems of European countries, particularly Portugal, the Napoleonic Code and the Germanic la ...
mandating the teaching of
Afro-Brazilian
Afro-Brazilians ( pt, afro-brasileiros; ) are Brazilians who have predominantly African ancestry (see "Black people#Brazil, preto"). Most members of another group of people, Pardo Brazilians, multiracial Brazilians or ''pardos'', may also have a ...
and
Indigenous
Indigenous may refer to:
*Indigenous peoples
*Indigenous (ecology), presence in a region as the result of only natural processes, with no human intervention
*Indigenous (band), an American blues-rock band
*Indigenous (horse), a Hong Kong racehorse ...
History and Culture which was passed and entered into effectiveness on 10 March 2008. It amends Law No. 9.394, of 20 December 1996, modified by Law No. 10.639, of 9 January 2003, which established the guidelines and bases of Brazilian national education, to include in the official curriculum of the education system the mandatory theme of Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous History and Culture.
Major ethnic groups
For complete list see
List of Indigenous peoples in Brazil
This is a list of the Brazil's indigenous or native peoples.
This is a ''sortable'' listing of peoples, associated language families, indigenous locations, and population estimates with dates. A particular group listing may include more than one ...
![Indios2-19042007](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/Indios2-19042007.jpg)
*
Amanyé
*
Atikum
The Atikum, also known as Huamuê or Uamué, are an indigenous people of Brazil that live in Bahia and Pernambuco.
Territory
They have 20 villages within the Atikum Indigenous Land, and their territory is near Carnaubeira da Penha.
*
Awá-Guajá
*
Baniwa
Baniwa (also known with local variants as Baniva, Baniua, Curipaco, Vaniva, Walimanai, Wakuenai) are indigenous South Americans, who speak the Baniwa language belonging to the Maipurean (Arawak) language family. They live in the Amazon Region, ...
*
Botocudo
*
Bará
*
Enawene Nawe
*
Guaraní Guarani, Guaraní or Guarany may refer to
Ethnography
* Guaraní people, an indigenous people from South America's interior (Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Bolivia)
* Guaraní language, or Paraguayan Guarani, an official language of Paraguay
* ...
*
Kadiwéu
*
Kaingang
The Kaingang (also spelled ''caingangue'' in Portuguese or ''kanhgág'' in the Kaingang language) people are an Indigenous Brazilian ethnic group spread out over the three southern Brazilian states of Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande ...
*
Kamayurá (Kamaiurá)
*
Karajá
The Karajá, also known as Iny, are an indigenous tribe located in Brazil.[Karaja Indians.]
''Hands Aro ...
*
Kayapo
The Kayapo (Portuguese: Caiapó ) people are the indigenous people in Brazil who inhabit a vast area spreading across the states of Pará and Mato Grosso, south of the Amazon River and along Xingu River and its tributaries. This pattern has given ...
*
Kubeo
*
Kaxinawá
The Huni Kuin (also known as: ''Kaxinawá'', ''Cashinahua'', ''Kaschinawa'', ''Kashinawa'', ''Caxinauás'') are an indigenous people of Brazil and Peru. Their villages are located along the Purus and Curanja Rivers in Peru and the Tarauacá, ...
*
Kokama
*
Korubo
The Korubo or Korubu, also known as the Dslala, are an indigenous people of Brazil living in the lower Vale do Javari in the western Amazon Basin. The group calls themselves 'Dslala', and in Portuguese they are referred to as ''caceteiros'' (clu ...
*
Kulina Madihá
The Kulina are an indigenous people of Brazil and Peru
, image_flag = Flag of Peru.svg
, image_coat = Escudo nacional del Perú.svg
, other_symbol = Great Seal of the State
, other_symbol_type = Na ...
*
Mbya
*
Makuxi
The Macushi ( pt, Macuxi) are an indigenous people living in the borderlands of southern Guyana, northern Brazil in the state of Roraima, and in an eastern part of Venezuela.
Identification
The Macushi are also known as the Macusi, Macussi, Ma ...
*
Matsés
The Matsés or Mayoruna are an indigenous people of the Peruvian and Brazilian Amazon. Their traditional homelands are located between the Javari and Galvez rivers. The Matsés have long guarded their lands from other indigenous tribes and stru ...
*
Mayoruna
*
Munduruku
The Munduruku, also known as Mundurucu or Wuy Jugu or
BMJ, are an indigenous people of Brazil living in the Amazon River basin. Some Munduruku communities are part of the Coatá-Laranjal Indigenous Land. They had an estimated population in 2014 ...
*
Mura people
The Muras are an indigenous people who live in the central and eastern parts of Amazonas, Brazil, along the Amazon river from the Madeira to the Purus. They played an important part in Brazilian history during colonial times and were known for t ...
*
Nambikwara
The Nambikwara (also called Nambikuára) is an indigenous people of Brazil, living in the Amazon. Currently about 1,200 Nambikwara live in indigenous territories in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso along the Guaporé and Juruena rivers. Their ...
*
Ofayé
*
Pai Tavytera
*
Panará
*
Pankararu
*
Pataxó
The Pataxó are an indigenous people in Bahia, Brazil with a population of about 11,800 individuals. They once spoke the Pataxó language, but now speak Portuguese and a revitalized version of the Pataxó language called Patxohã. The Pataxó's t ...
*
Pirahã
*
Paiter
The Paiter, also known as Suruí, Suruí do Jiparaná, and Suruí de Rondônia, are an indigenous people of Brazil, who live in ten villages near the Mato Grosso–Rondônia border. They are farmers, who cultivate coffee.
Language
The Paiter sp ...
*
Potiguara
The Potiguara (also Potyguara or Pitiguara) are an indigenous people of Brazil. The Potiguara people live in Paraíba, in the municipalities of Marcação, Baía da Traição and Rio Tinto. Their population numbers sixteen thousand individual ...
*
Sateré Mawé
*
Suruí do Pará
*
Tapirape
*
Terena
The Trans-European Research and Education Networking Association (TERENA, ) was a not-for-profit association of European national research and education networks (NRENs) incorporated in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The association was originally f ...
*
Ticuna
The Ticuna (also Magüta, Tucuna, Tikuna, or Tukuna) are an indigenous people of Brazil (36,000'')'', Colombia (6,000), and Peru (7,000). They are the most numerous tribe in the Brazilian Amazon.
History
The Ticuna were originally a tribe that ...
*
Tremembé
Tremembé is a municipality in the state of São Paulo in Brazil. It is part of the Metropolitan Region of Vale do Paraíba e Litoral Norte. The population is 47,714 (2020 est.) in an area of 191.09 km². The elevation is 560 m.
A shr ...
*
Tupi Tupi may refer to:
* Tupi people of Brazil
* Tupi or Tupian languages, spoken in South America
** Tupi language, an extinct Tupian language spoken by the Tupi people
* Tupi oil field off the coast of Brazil
* Tupi Paulista, a Brazilian municipalit ...
*
Waorani
The Huaorani, Waorani, or Waodani, also known as the Waos, are an Indigenous people from the Amazonian Region of Ecuador ( Napo, Orellana, and Pastaza Provinces) who have marked differences from other ethnic groups from Ecuador. The alternate ...
*
Wapixana
The Wapishana or Wapichan (or Wapisiana, Wapitxana, Vapidiana, Wapixana) are an indigenous group found in the Roraima area of northern Brazil and southern Guyana.
Location
Currently the Wapishana are located in the State of Roraima, Brazil, nort ...
*
Wauja
The Waura or Wauja (waujá) are an indigenous people of Brazil. Their language, Waura language, Waura, is an Arawakan language. They live in the region near the Upper Xingu River, in the Xingu Indigenous Park, and had a population of 487 in 2010. ...
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Witoto
The Witoto (also Huitoto or Uitota) are an indigenous peoples in Colombia, indigenous people in southeastern Colombia and indigenous people in Peru, northern Peru.
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Xakriabá
The Xakriabá () are an indigenous people of Brazil. One of the Gê peoples who spoke the Xakriabá dialect of the Akwe language, they used to live in the Tocantins River area. As of 2010, 9,196 Xakriabá people lived in the state of Minas Ge ...
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Xavante
The Xavante (also Shavante, Chavante, Akuen, A'uwe, Akwe, Awen, or Akwen) are an indigenous people, comprising 15,315 individuals within the territory of eastern Mato Grosso state in Brazil. They speak the Xavante language, part of the Jê langu ...
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Xukuru
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Yanomami
The Yanomami, also spelled Yąnomamö or Yanomama, are a group of approximately 35,000 indigenous people who live in some 200–250 villages in the Amazon rainforest on the border between Venezuela and Brazil.
Etymology
The ethnonym ''Yanomami ...
See also
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Amazon Watch
Amazon Watch is a nonprofit organization founded in 1996, and based in Oakland, California, it works to protect the rainforest and advance the rights of indigenous peoples in the Amazon Basin. It partners with indigenous and environmental organ ...
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Amerindians
The Indigenous peoples of the Americas are the inhabitants of the Americas before the arrival of the European settlers in the 15th century, and the ethnic groups who now identify themselves with those peoples.
Many Indigenous peoples of the Ame ...
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Archaeology of the Americas
The archaeology of the Americas is the study of the archaeology of the Western Hemisphere, including North America (Mesoamerica), Central America, South America and the Caribbean. This includes the study of pre-historic/Pre-Columbian and histor ...
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Agriculture in Brazil
The agriculture of Brazil is historically one of the principal bases of Brazil's economy. While its initial focus was on sugarcane, Brazil eventually became the world's largest exporter of coffee, soybeans, beef, and crop-based ethanol.
The ...
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Bandeirantes
The ''Bandeirantes'' (), literally "flag-carriers", were slavers, explorers, adventurers, and fortune hunters in early Colonial Brazil. They are largely responsible for Brazil's great expansion westward, far beyond the Tordesillas Line of 1494 ...
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Belo Monte Dam
The Belo Monte Dam (''formerly known as'' Kararaô) is a hydroelectric dam complex on the northern part of the Xingu River in the state of Pará, Brazil. After its completion, with the installation of its 18th turbine, in November 2019, the inst ...
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Bering Land Bridge
Beringia is defined today as the land and maritime area bounded on the west by the Lena River in Russia; on the east by the Mackenzie River in Canada; on the north by 72 degrees north latitude in the Chukchi Sea; and on the south by the tip of ...
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Camarão indians' letters
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Darcy Ribeiro
Darcy Ribeiro (October 26, 1922 – February 17, 1997) was a Brazilian anthropologist, historian, sociologist, author and politician. His ideas have influenced several scholars of Brazilian and Latin American studies. As Minister of Educat ...
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Encyclopedia of Indigenous Peoples in Brazil
The ''Encyclopedia of Indigenous Peoples in Brazil'' is a specialized encyclopedia about the indigenous peoples in Brazil, published online since 1998 by the Instituto Socioambiental (ISA).
It presents over 200 articles with ethnographic informat ...
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Ecotourism in the Amazon rainforest
The Amazon rainforest, Amazon jungle or ; es, Selva amazónica, , or usually ; french: Forêt amazonienne; nl, Amazoneregenwoud. In English, the names are sometimes capitalized further, as Amazon Rainforest, Amazon Forest, or Amazon Jungle. ...
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Chief Raoni
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COIAB
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Ceibo Alliance
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Brazilians
Brazilians ( pt, Brasileiros, ) are the citizens of Brazil. A Brazilian can also be a person born abroad to a Brazilian parent or legal guardian as well as a person who acquired Brazilian citizenship. Brazil is a multiethnic society, which me ...
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Fundação Nacional do Índio
Fundação Nacional do Índio (, ''National Indian Foundation'') or FUNAI is a Brazilian governmental protection agency for Amerindian interests and their culture.
Original founding as Indian Protection Service
In 1910, the Indian Protecti ...
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Indian Day
Indian or Indians may refer to:
Peoples South Asia
* Indian people, people of Indian nationality, or people who have an Indian ancestor
** Non-resident Indian, a citizen of India who has temporarily emigrated to another country
* South Asia ...
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Índia pega no laço ''Índia pega no laço'' is a phrase used in Brazil that translates to "an Indian woman caught by the lasso". The phrase is commonly used by non-Indigenous Brazilians, particularly white Brazilians, who claim that they have an Indigenous female ance ...
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Indigenous peoples of South America
The Indigenous peoples of South America or South American Indigenous peoples, are the pre-Colombian peoples of South America and their descendants. These peoples contrast with South Americans of European ancestry and those of African descent.
...
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Man of the Hole
The Man of the Hole (; – ), or the Tanaru Indian (), was an indigenous person who lived alone in the Amazon rainforest in the Brazilian state of Rondônia. He was the sole inhabitant of the Tanaru Indigenous Territory, a protected indigeno ...
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Museu do Índio
O Museu do Índio (English: The Museum of the Indian) is a cultural and scientific agency of the Fundação Nacional do Índio (English: National Foundation of the Indian) or FUNAI. It was created by Darcy Ribeiro, in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Br ...
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Uncontacted peoples
Uncontacted peoples are groups of indigenous peoples living without sustained contact with neighbouring communities and the world community. Groups who decide to remain uncontacted are referred to as indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation. ...
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Percy Fawcett
Percy Harrison Fawcett (18 August 1867 during or after 1925) was a British geographer, artillery officer, cartographer, archaeologist, and explorer of South America. Fawcett disappeared in 1925 (along with his eldest son, Jack, and one of J ...
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Sydney Possuelo
Sydney Ferreira Possuelo (born 19 April 1940, in Santos Dumont), is a Brazilian explorer, social activist and ethnographer who is considered the leading authority on Brazil's remaining isolated Indigenous Peoples.
Life and career
Sydney Possuel ...
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Villas Boas brothers
Villas may refer to:
Places
* Villas, Florida, United States
* Villas, Illinois, United States
* Villas, New Jersey, United States
* Las Villas, a region of Spain
* Las Villas (Cuba), a former Cuban Province
* The Villas, a housing estate in Stok ...
References
External links
Fundação Nacional do Índio, National Foundation of the Native AmericanEncyclopedia of Indigenous people in Brazil. Instituto SocioambientalEtnolinguistica.Org: discussion list on South American languagesIndigenous people Issues and Resources: BrazilIndigenous people in Brazilat
Google Videos
Google Search (also known simply as Google) is a search engine provided by Google. Handling more than 3.5 billion searches per day, it has a 92% share of the global search engine market. It is also the List of most visited websites, most-visi ...
New photos of Uncontacted Brazilian tribeGoogle Video on Indigenous People of BrazilChildren of the Amazon, a documentary on indigenous people in Brazilby ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Indigenous Peoples in Brazil
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
Ethnic groups in Brazil
Race in Brazil