The Tremembé or Teremembé people are an
indigenous people
There is no generally accepted definition of Indigenous peoples, although in the 21st century the focus has been on self-identification, cultural difference from other groups in a state, a special relationship with their traditional territ ...
in the
states
State most commonly refers to:
* State (polity), a centralized political organization that regulates law and society within a territory
**Sovereign state, a sovereign polity in international law, commonly referred to as a country
**Nation state, a ...
of
Ceará
Ceará (, ) is one of the 26 states of Brazil, located in the Northeast Region, Brazil, northeastern part of the country, on the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic coast. It is the List of Brazilian states by population, eighth-largest Brazilian State by ...
and
Maranhão
Maranhão () is a States of Brazil, state in Brazil. Located in the country's Northeast Region, Brazil, Northeast Region, it has a population of about 7 million and an area of and it is divided into 217 municipalities. Clockwise from north, it ...
in
Brazil
Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...
. In 2020, there were 3,837 of them.
Settlement area
Existing members of this ethnicity are centered in the Almofala district of the municipality of
Itarema, and a few more in the neighboring municipalities of
Acaraú and
Itapipoca, on the Atlantic coast of Ceará, some 150 km north of the state capital of
Fortaleza
Fortaleza ( ; ; ) is the state capital of Ceará, located in Northeast Region, Brazil, Northeastern Brazil. It is Brazil's 4th largest city—Fortaleza surpassed Salvador, Bahia, Salvador in 2022 census with a population of slightly over 2.4 mi ...
. CEDI (1990) estimates that the Tremembé were 3,060 until 1986, but a more recent estimate places their numbers at merely 1,175. The Tremembé people live in tipis.
History
The Tremembé were one of the few ''Tapuia'' ("non-
Tupi people") that lived on the Brazilian coast on the advent of European contact c. 1500. The Tremembé ranged over a large coastal area ranging across the modern states of
Pará
Pará () is a Federative units of Brazil, state of Brazil, located in northern Brazil and traversed by the lower Amazon River. It borders the Brazilian states of Amapá, Maranhão, Tocantins (state), Tocantins, Mato Grosso, Amazonas (Brazilian st ...
, Maranhão,
Piauí
Piauí ( ) is one of the states of Brazil, located in the country's Northeast Region, Brazil, Northeast Region. The state has 1.6% of the Brazilian population and produces 0.7% of the Brazilian GDP.
Piauí has the shortest coastline of any coas ...
and Ceará. The ethnohistorical map of Nimuendajú situates the traditional territory of the Tremembé in two segments along the northern Atlantic coast of Brazil. The first segment stretched some 160 km from the bay of the
Caeté River (by modern
Bragança, Pará) to the bay of
Turiaçu (Maranhão). The second and principal segment stretched some 500 km, from the environs of
São Luís, Maranhão
São Luís (; "Saint Louis") is the capital and largest city of the Brazilian state of Maranhão. The city is located on Upaon-açu Island or Ilha de São Luís, in the Baía de São Marcos (''Saint Mark's Bay''), an extension of the Atlantic ...
as far as the region of Fortaleza. The small interruption between the two stretches was occupied by a Tupinambá tribe. The Tremembé population are estimated to have once numbered 20,000.
The Tremembé, a Tapuia tribe, were virtually surrounded by Tupi peoples - on the coast, there were
Tupinambá to the west, and the
Potiguara
The Potiguara (also Potyguara or Pitiguara) are an indigenous peoples in Brazil, indigenous people of Brazil. The Potiguara people live in Paraíba, in the municipalities of Marcação, Baía da Traição and Rio Tinto, Paraíba, Rio Tinto. Th ...
and
Tabajara to the east. In their hinterlands were other Tupi ethnicities, like the
Guajá, the
Urubú, and the
Guajajara.
In the 17th century, the Tremembé began to settle in the
Jesuit
The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...
mission of Aracati-mirím, at Aldeia do Cajueiro (now Almofala) by the
Acaraú River in Ceará. There was also a (non-Jesuit) mission at
Tutóia (in Maranhão). When the Portuguese minister, the
Marquis of Pombal, issued his 1759 decrees expelling the Jesuits and dismantling their missions, the settled Tremembé population moved, along with a handful of priests, to Vila Nova do Soure (
Caucaia). However, they did not adapt well to their new environment, and were allowed to return to their old mission settlement, the Aldeia do Cajueiro, which was renamed Almofala and incorporated as an Indian town in 1766.
200px, Indigenous peoples of Ceará, 2008
The Tremembé were dispossessed of most of their remaining lands in the aftermath of the 1854 "Lei da Terra" (land tenure decree) of the
Empire of Brazil
The Empire of Brazil was a 19th-century state that broadly comprised the territories which form modern Brazil and Uruguay until the latter achieved independence in 1828. The empire's government was a Representative democracy, representative Par ...
. The state governor of Ceará issued a decree in 1863 declaring the Tremembé an extinct people, remaining Indians officially regarded as
caboclo
A caboclo () is a person of mixed Indigenous Brazilian and European ancestry, or, less commonly, a culturally assimilated or detribalized person of full Amerindian descent. In Brazil, a ''caboclo'' generally refers to this specific type of ' ...
s (mixed-race) or "descendants" of Indians, but not an existing ethnicity. Nonetheless, the Tremembé resurged and received recognition from the
Fundação Nacional do Índio in the 1980s.
Culture
The Tremembé were known for their manufacture of crescent-shaped axes, also called "anchor axes", which were produced the first night of a crescent moon and can be found scattered along Eastern Brazil. They shared these axes with the
Canela people. They believed that with these axes, they were invincible in battle.
Language
The original language of the Tremembé is extinct and entirely unknown.
Current members of the ethnicity speak
Portuguese as their mother tongue. The language is
unclassified, but generally believed to have ''not'' been part of the
Tupi–Guarani family (thus, "Tapuia", or non-Tupi). Nonetheless, the Tremembé may have borrowed a considerable number of Tupi words through interaction with their Tupi neighbors.
Notable Tremembé
* Kunã Yporã Tremembé, Vice-Presidential Candidate for the
Unified Workers' Socialist Party of Brazil during the 2022 Brazilian Election
Notes
External links
Tremembéat Povos Indígenas no Brasil (in Portuguese).
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tremembe people
Indigenous peoples in Brazil
Indigenous peoples of Eastern Brazil