The Tupi in the Age of Conquest

What formed the “internal dynamics” of Tupi societies? At the risk of over-simplifying the enormous complexity of the social structures of sixteenth-century Brazil, we may identify some of the constitutive elements of the dynamics that animated them: the process of fragmentation and reconstitution of local groups, the leadership roles played by chiefs and shamans, and finally the fundamental importance of the warrior complex in the affirmation of these groups’ historical identity. Taken together, these elements were of particular relevance to turning points in the subsequent development of relations with the Europeans. In this sense, they help to explain not only the historical bases on which patterns of indigenous resistance and adaptation rested, but also the means by which Portuguese domination became possible.

Upon arriving in Brazil, the European invaders soon discovered that much of the coast as well as the more accessible parts of the interior were occupied by societies that shared certain basic characteristics, common to what came to be called Tupi-Guarani culture. Despite this apparent homogeneity, however, any attempt at providing a synthesis of the ethnographic situation of sixteenth-century Brazil immediately runs into two problems. In the first place, Tupi society remained radically segmented, and relations between segments and even between local units most often were associated in one way or another with internecine warfare. Referring to the relationship between the Tupinambá and Tupinikin groups of southern Brazil, Gabriel Soares de Sousa observed, in his rich descriptive treatise on early colonial Brazil, considered by many to be the most important sixteenth-century account: “And even though the Tupinikin and Tupinambá are enemies, between them there is no greater difference in language and customs than between the residents of Lisbon and those of Beira.”¹ Second, large parts of Brazil were also inhabited by non-Tupi peoples, representing dozens of unrelated language groups.²

To deal with these problems, sixteenth-century Europeans sought to reduce the vast ethnographic panorama to two generic categories: Tupi and Tapuia. The Tupi side of this dichotomy encompassed the coastal societies, including the Guarani, that were in direct contact with the Portuguese, French, and Spanish. While these groups exhibited similar traditions and cultural patterns, the same cannot be said of the so-called Tapuia. Indeed, the term “Tapuia” was often applied to groups that not only differed socially from the Tupi pattern, but were little known to Europeans. In the Tratado descritivo, Gabriel Soares de Sousa acknowledged the precarious state of European knowledge: “As the Tapuia are so many and are so divided by group, custom, and language, in order to say much of them, it would be necessary to take careful and deliberate notice of their divisions, life, and customs; but, up to the present this has been impossible…”³ At around the same time, the Jesuit Fernão Cardim classified seventy-six non-Tupi groups as “Tapuia.”⁴ It would seem that for these early observers the denomination represented little more than the antithesis of Tupi society, and that the groups so described were thus defined in purely negative terms.

In any case, the emergence of the Tupi–Tapuia dichotomy had some basis, to the degree that it identified different historical trajectories and distinct forms of social organization, something emphasized in virtually all sixteenth-century sources.⁵ Laying out his first impressions of the Indians of Brazil, the Jesuit missionary Father Manuel da Nóbrega portrayed the Tapuia in vague terms: “There is in these lands a sort of people who do not live in houses, but in the hills, and they are at war with all and by all are feared.”⁶ Gabriel Soares de Sousa, referring to the Gê-speaking Guaianá of São Paulo, emphasized in a more detailed fashion the apparent backwardness of these Indians relative to the Tupi:

These superficial and incomplete images of Tapuia groups contrast with more elaborate descriptions of Tupi societies. As we shall see in greater detail, these differences – real or imagined – played an important role in Euro-indigenous relations as they unfolded with the arrival of the whites. Whether manifested peacefully or contentiously, the coexistence of radically divergent forms of social organization was apparent in every part of Brazil in the sixteenth century. The region encompassed by the captaincy of São Vicente was no exception, though the identity of the original inhabitants of the place where the town of São Paulo was founded has aroused some controversy. There, alongside one another, lived Tupinikin and Guaianá, the former Tupi-speaking and the latter Gê-speaking, thus neatly fitting the dichotomous Tupi–Tapuia scheme. We have already invoked Gabriel Soares de Sousa’s observations of the Guaianá; to these we can add the comments of one of the most direct observers of the situation, Hans Staden, a German adventurer who was held captive by a Tupi-speaking group. He clearly distinguished the Guaianá from the Tupinikin, describing them as inhabitants of the coastal escarpment, who “do not have permanent homes, like the other savages,” and identifying hunting and gathering as their basic source of sustenance.⁸

In fact, most sixteenth-century reports make it clear that the Tupinikin constituted the principal inhabitants of the captaincy of São Vicente, at least until the last decade of the century.⁹ While present on the coast, the Tupinikin – “whose region extends eighty miles into the interior and forty along the coast,” according to Staden¹⁰ – maintained an important network of villages above the coastal escarpment that the Portuguese would call the Serra do Mar, around the site of what would become the town of São Paulo.

Early sources use ethnic terms to identify what may be considered tribal agglomerations, but the basic unit of social and political organization among Tupi groups was the multi-family village. Different communities could have very close relations, bound by alliances or kinship ties, without these relations involving the development of larger political or territorial units.¹¹ In effect, connections between local units were subject to constant changes stemming from historical circumstances, as frequent shifts in the makeup of alliances affected the nature and extent of multi-village bonds. This mutability escaped the attention of colonial-era chroniclers, who described groups of villages as if they formed larger, more stable political groupings.

Unfortunately, contemporary accounts tell us little about the number and size of sixteenth-century Tupinikin villages.¹² It would seem, however, that the principal Tupinikin settlement at the time of the arrival of the Europeans was the one headed by the chief Tibiriçá, certainly the most influential indigenous leader of the region. In the 1550s, this village – known as Inhapuambuçu and, perhaps, as Piratininga as well¹³ – would be host to the chapel and precarious College of São Paulo de Piratininga, installed by the Jesuits on January 25, 1554. Another important village of the period was Jerubatuba, under the chieftainship of Caiubi, supposedly Tibiriçá’s brother. It was located about 12 kilometers south of Inhapuambuçu, near the future settlement of Santo Amaro. In 1553, the German adventurer Ulrich Schmidl, having spent a few days in the village, described it as “a very large place.”¹⁴ Finally, a third village that stood out in sixteenth-century reports, Ururaí, also had as its chief a brother of Tibiriçá, named Piquerobi. Located 6 kilometers to the east of Inhapuambuçu, this settlement became the site of the Jesuit mission village of São Miguel.

We have little information about the size of these precolonial units, but from what can be ascertained from post-contact accounts, Tupinikin villages may have been smaller than their Tupinambá counterparts in Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, and Maranhão, according to the detailed descriptions of French and Portuguese chroniclers and missionaries. Referring to the interior of the captaincy of São Vicente, Father Diogo Jacomé mentioned the existence of some villages with four hundred souls each.¹⁵ His fellow Jesuit, Brother José de Anchieta, affirmed that each village “consists just of six or seven homes,” which for Hans Staden would be a “small village.”¹⁶ These observations contrast with the population size frequently attributed to Tupinambá villages, estimated at around 800 to 1,000 inhabitants, though some awestruck chroniclers arrived at figures in the thousands.¹⁷

In any case, what is known for certain is that these villages did not constitute permanent, fixed settlements, for after a few years groups tended to move to a new locale. In the plateau region, the first Jesuits alleged that migrations occurred every three or four years, while other accounts suggest longer spans of time between moves, of twelve or even twenty years. Already in the initial period of Jesuit influence, in 1557, Inhapuambuçu and Jerubatuba were experiencing a process of fragmentation. “What is worse,” commented Father Luís da Grã, “is that they do not go together.”¹⁸

These moves were stimulated by various possible factors, including soil exhaustion, shrinking game reserves, the emergence of a charismatic new leader, internal factional disputes, or the death of a headman. Whatever the precise motive, the recurrent creation of new units of settlement constituted important events involving the reproduction of the principal bases of indigenous social organization. In this sense, it is important to recognize the fundamental role played by the chief in the original composition and proliferation of each village, as the community’s identity – both historical and political – corresponded to the personal trajectory of its leader.¹⁹

The formation of independent villages occurred when an emergent political leader managed to mobilize a significant following of relatives and friends. Although the headman’s principal source of authority came from his role as wartime leader, his responsibilities also had much to do with the organization of material and social life. According to Gabriel Soares de Sousa, once a headman determined that his group should move, he would pick the site of the new village, supervise the construction of malocas (multi-family residential lodges), and select the ideal location for the garden plot that was to provide the community’s subsistence. He not only worked alongside his followers, he also set the example: “when he prepares the plot of land with the help of his relatives and friends, he is the first to begin work.”²⁰ This detail is revealing, for it shows that despite the headman’s greater responsibility and prestige, he remained essentially equal to his followers in the productive sphere. In other words, political leadership rarely brought with it economic privilege or distinct social position.²¹

Similarly, the authority of headmen always remained subject to the consent of his followers. In describing leadership in Tupinambá and Tupinikin communities, Staden commented: “Each one obeys the headman of his hut. What the headman orders is done, not by force or out of fear, but out of goodwill.”²² The first Jesuits, for their part, frequently lamented the lack of a “King” among the Tupi, recognizing that political fragmentation served as an obstacle to their work. Writing from São Vicente, Pedro Correia reported that the conversion of the Indians would be a very difficult task “because they have no King, rather each Village and house has its Headman.”²³

The latter observation reflects the difficulty the Europeans had in identifying the sources of political authority in indigenous societies. The sixteenth-century literature projected three distinct levels of political leadership, designating the term principal for each type of leader. The term was applied to maloca headmen, to village headmen, and to pan-village leaders. This last category appears only rarely, in general only in times of war, when distinct groups formed alliances in the face of a common enemy. For example, on various occasions in the sixteenth century, the Tupinikin headman Tibiriçá and the Tupinambá headman Cunhambebe led warriors from several villages in battle, each earning widespread fame as a brave, well-respected leader.²⁴

While the principal source of authority lay in the headman’s ability to mobilize warriors, he also possessed other significant attributes. One notes, for example, oratorical skills, which figured in the making of a great leader among the Tupi. Anchieta, himself an excellent public speaker, gave an admiring account of Tibiriçá’s speech on the occasion of the death of the Jesuit Pedro Correia.²⁵ According to Fernão Cardim, before dawn every day the headman “for a half an hour preaches to them, and admonishes them that they will work as their ancestors did, and assigns them their tasks, telling them the things that they must do.”²⁶ In a similar account, the Jesuit Manuel da Nóbrega, writing from São Vicente, provided further description of the content of such speeches: “every day before dawn, from a high place he tells each house what they must do that day, and he tells them that they must live as a community.”²⁷

In addition to describing the headman’s coordinating role, Cardim’s and Nóbrega’s comments indicate another of the figure’s non-military attributes. Headmen acted as guardians of tradition, expressing and organizing the tasks of daily life in terms of what had been set down in the past. The preservation of tradition was a fundamental element in defining a collective identity. The Tupinambá headman Jap-açu, who submitted to French pressures to eradicate prisoner sacrifice and cannibalism only to have his will vetoed in a meeting of village elders, explained how tradition dictated practice:

The role of guardian of tradition was shared by shamans, or pajés, who sometimes wielded political authority as well.²⁹ According to the Capuchin missionary Yves d’Évreux’s description of the Tupinambá of Maranhão, the shamans “occupy among the savages the position of mediators between the spirits and the rest of the people.”³⁰ As intermediaries between the supernatural and everyday life, the shamans exercised multiple functions, such as healing the sick, interpreting dreams, and warding off the many outside threats to local society, including evil spirits and demons. Their authority derived primarily from the esoteric knowledge they possessed, resulting from long years of apprenticeship with experienced shamans. Referring to the Tupinikin, Nóbrega wrote: “there are among them some who make themselves holy men and promise health and victory against enemies.”³¹ The importance and prestige of the shamans were also emphasized by the Tupinambá headman Porta Grande, who told the Jesuits that “they gave them the good things, that is, supplies of food.”³²

In addition to the shamans, who lived in the villages, the spiritual life of Tupi-Guarani peoples was marked by the occasional presence of wandering prophets, known as caraíbas. Although outsiders to community life, the caraíbas exerted considerable influence over the inhabitants of the villages. According to Nóbrega, “every few years, sorcerers come from distant lands, feigning holiness; and at the time of their arrival they order the Indians to clear the paths and receive them with dancing and festivities as is their custom.”³³

Gifted speakers, these prophets traveled from village to village, spreading messianic revelations. Nóbrega offered a suggestive description of their apocalyptic message:

Messages like this one persuaded entire villages to embark on long voyages in search of an earthly paradise, a “land without evil,” where abundance, eternal youth, and the taking of captives prevailed. Although many authors have explained these migrations as either messianic responses to the conquest or manifestations of inherent conflict between different types of indigenous authority (between headmen and caraíbas), it is important to recognize their historic dimension.³⁵ According to Carlos Fausto, along with the spatial orientation of these movements, which resulted in migrations (generally to the East), the search for the “land without evil” had a temporal basis as well. The land of valiant ancestors also figured as the future destination of brave warriors who killed and ate many enemies.³⁶ In effect, the prophet’s message addressed the basic elements that placed the Tupi within a historical dimension: spatial movements, headmanship, shamanism, and, above all, warfare and prisoner sacrifice.

Among the Tupinikin, political and spiritual leadership was most significant in wartime. Headmen prepared battle plans and led warriors; shamans, through the interpretation of dreams and other omens, determined when attacks would be most advantageous; and the caraíbas exalted the warrior ideal in their speeches. In his lengthy description of indigenous social organization, Soares de Sousa ably summarized the central role of war in Tupi society: “As the Tupinambá are very warlike, all of their fundamental principles have to do with making war on their enemies.”³⁷

Early colonial accounts, despite their differences, highlight three significant features that played crucial roles in internecine and, subsequently, Euro–indigenous warfare: the vengeance motive, the practice of prisoner sacrifice, and the complex configuration of inter-village alliances and rivalries.

On the plateau, the Tupinikin and their enemies – particularly the Tupinambá of the coast – provide consummate examples of internecine warfare. Through the early sixteenth century, the Tupinikin and Tupinambá engaged in frequent skirmishes, in an unending cycle of armed conflicts. These ongoing conflicts assumed gigantic proportions by mid-century, mainly because of the colonial implications of the so-called War of the Tamoios. Eyewitness accounts describe battles involving hundreds and even thousands of combatants on land and at sea. In his description of the Tupinambá, the sixteenth-century historian Pero de Magalhães Gândavo declared: “and it thus seems a strange thing to see two, three thousand naked men on one side and the other with great whistling and howling, launching arrows at one another.”³⁸ For his part, Anchieta, as a hostage of the Tupinambá, witnessed the preparation of two hundred canoes for war against the Portuguese, each capable of carrying twenty to thirty warriors, along with weapons and provisions.³⁹

Although the circumstances of the War of the Tamoios were exceptional, the observations of the Jesuits, Hans Staden, and the French missionary Jean de Léry, all of whom lived for substantial stretches of time among Tupi peoples during this period, do reveal significant aspects of indigenous warfare that must have existed before the arrival of the Europeans. All accounts agree that the principal motivation for the constant fighting between local groups lay in the thirst for revenge. “These people have the feeling of vengeance deeply rooted in their hearts,” wrote Jean de Léry.⁴⁰ Nóbrega, shortly after his arrival in Brazil, observed, “And there is no war of covetousness, because no one has any more than what they fish and hunt, and the fruit that all the land yields: but only for hatred and vengeance.”⁴¹ And Staden, explaining “why they devour their enemies,” reported various provocative statements called out in the heat of battle, such as: “I am here to take vengeance on you for the death of my friends.”⁴²

Despite the skepticism of many modern authors, the revenge motive explains a great deal. In defining traditional enemies and reaffirming social roles within local groups, vengeance, in particular, and warfare, more generally, played important parts in situating Tupi peoples within a spatial and temporal dimension. During his time among the Tupinambá, Jean de Léry recorded an interesting series of indigenous orations that are suggestive of the significance of warfare in preserving the collective memory of the local group. According to Léry, Tupinambá elders constantly reminded the other Indians of their traditional duties with respect to warfare:

This orator would then answer his own exhortations, exclaiming, “No, no people of my nation, powerful and unyielding young men, it is not thus that we should proceed; we should go seek out the enemy even if we all die and are devoured, but we must avenge our fathers!”⁴³

Thus, it would appear that indigenous warfare, fueled by a universally perceived need to avenge past injuries, provided an essential link between the past and future of local groups.⁴⁴ Revenge itself was to be consummated in one of two traditional ways: through the killing of enemies in battle or through their capture and subsequent ritual sacrifice. Enemies spared on the battlefield would endure long captivity in their enemies’ village, culminating in a great feast, when captives were killed and eaten. The taking of prisoners was directed solely toward these events, though colonial observers, for obvious reasons, sought to equate captives with slaves.

The role of prisoner sacrifice and cannibalism has stirred considerably controversy since the sixteenth century. However, an exaggerated focus on cannibalism, naturally abhorrent to Western sensibilities, has led to a distorted view of the warfare-sacrifice complex. It is interesting to note, for example, that despite the success of some Jesuits and Capuchins in persuading particular groups to give up cannibalism, the missionaries did not find it so easy to curtail ritual sacrifice. This suggests, once again, that the consummation of vengeance – with or without cannibalism – constituted the driving force behind indigenous warfare in coastal Brazil.⁴⁵

The importance of the sacrificial rite also extended to the sphere of inter-village relations. The ritual feast marking the end of captivity often brought together allies and kinfolk from various villages. According to Nóbrega, it was the killing “that drew everyone from the district together to watch the festivities.”⁴⁶ Even when the influence of the Jesuits was beginning to be felt among the Tupinikin, one group refused to suspend “a great slaughter of slaves,” despite the insistent appeals of the priests. “The Indians excused themselves by saying that it could not be [halted] because all of the guests were already assembled and all of the expenses already made on wines and other things.”⁴⁷

Warfare, the taking of captives, and prisoner sacrifice thus provided one of the bases for relations among Tupi villages in precolonial Brazil. Battles often brought together warriors from various villages; in Piratininga, for example, even in the presence of Jesuits, the Tupinikin hosted other local groups in preparation for attacks on the Tupinambá.⁴⁸ And, in the aftermath of victories and defeats, allies and kinfolk gathered in host villages: in victory, to savor the consummation of vengeance; in defeat, to rebuild villages that had been destroyed and to renew their decimated populations. The dynamics of inter-village relations, whether expressed in terms of conflict or alliance, in turn provided one of the keys to European success – or failure – in gaining control over the native population.

Contact, Alliance, and Conflict

Upon arriving in São Vicente, the first Portuguese immediately recognized the fundamental importance of warfare in inter-village relations. Seeking to explain the phenomenon, they convinced themselves that the unending conflicts represented little more than meaningless vendettas; at the same time, they saw that they could achieve a great deal by becoming involved in them. Considering the state of political fragmentation that existed in indigenous Brazil, the prospect of conquest, domination, and exploitation of the native population depended on the involvement of the Portuguese in these internal wars through sporadic alliances. Moreover, at least in the eyes of the invaders, the presence of a considerable number of prisoners of war offered a potential mechanism for supplying captive labor to colonial enterprises.

Native peoples, for their part, certainly perceived immediate advantages of their own in the formation of alliances with the Europeans, particularly in making war against their mortal enemies. However, they soon discovered the harmful effects of such alliances. The consequent transformation of warfare, aggravated by frequent outbreaks of infectious disease, brought serious ruptures in the internal organization of indigenous societies. Even more important, the insatiable appetite of their new allies for captives, who would now be used for their labor, threatened to subvert the principal end of indigenous warfare: ritual sacrifice.

The Tupinikin began to confront these problems in the captaincy of São Vicente in the first half of the sixteenth century. When the Portuguese arrived in 1531–1532, the Tupinikin had accepted the European presence precisely because it did not present a direct threat to indigenous well-being. After all, the main Tupinikin villages were located above the coastal escarpment, along the Tietê River. In addition, among their principal “warriors” was one João Ramalho, a Portuguese who had joined the local group led by Tibiriçá years earlier. Wedded to a daughter of this chief, Ramalho ended up establishing another village, which would serve as the base for the future Portuguese town of Santo André da Borda do Campo.

Without a doubt, the alliance between the Tupinikin and the Portuguese owed a great deal to the presence of João Ramalho. According to the Jesuit Nóbrega, who had arrived in São Vicente recently and was thus writing on the basis of secondhand information, Ramalho was a completely indigenized Portuguese. Nóbrega wrote: “his whole way of life and that of his children follow the way of the Indians … He and his sons have many women, they go with their sisters and have children with them, father and sons alike. His sons go off to war with the Indians, and their celebrations are those of the Indians and thus they live going about naked like the same Indians.”⁴⁹

Despite his initial disgust at Ramalho’s heathenish ways, Nóbrega immediately recognized the fundamental importance of his presence in the colony. In fact, on its first visit to the villages of the plateau, the Jesuit mission led by Nóbrega counted on the support of Ramalho’s eldest son, André, “to lend more authority to our ministry, because [João Ramalho] is very well known and venerated among the heathen, and has daughters married to the principal men of this captaincy, and all these sons and daughters are from an Indian woman, daughter to one of the greatest and most prominent ones of this land.”⁵⁰ Later, when the Portuguese resolved to settle the plateau, the principal Luso-Tupi settlement grew up around the village of João Ramalho.

However, even before the formal settlement of the plateau by the Portuguese in the 1550s, the alliance was put to serious test. The development of colonial enterprises on the coast had increased the demand for supplies of basic foodstuffs and Indian labor, particularly in the 1540s. Although some larger units, like that of the Schetz family of Antwerp, had gone so far as to import slaves from West Africa, most turned exclusively to the local Indian population. In 1548, according to a contemporary account, the captaincy already had six sugar mills and a slave population of more than 3,000 captives.⁵¹

Early on, the settlers attempted to obtain indigenous workers in two ways: through barter or the purchase of captives. In the first mode of recruitment, the Portuguese offered tools, mirrors, and trinkets to Tupinikin headmen, who would send work crews to the fields of the Europeans. Though useful in the initial phase of clearing lands to be planted, this mode of labor acquisition soon proved inadequate as it came up against the apparent inconstancy of native peoples. In the second mode of recruitment, the Portuguese sought to encourage indigenous warfare in order to produce a steady stream of captives, who instead of being sacrificed would be traded to the Europeans as slaves.

Neither process was very efficient, due especially to the refusal of native peoples to meet the expectations of the Portuguese, which provoked fundamental changes in the balance of inter-group relations that had existed before the arrival of the Europeans. The negative impact of European products on native societies was underscored in the 1550s by the Jesuit Pedro Correia:

Beneath this moralistic discourse lies a hint of the deep process of change and disintegration that had taken hold of indigenous villages as a result of contact with the Portuguese. As time went on, the Tupi response began to undermine the Europeans’ plans, precisely because the transformation of native societies did not occur in the manner envisioned by the Portuguese.

An immediate problem emerged with the failure of the barter system as a mechanism for obtaining what the colonizers needed, particularly in the provisioning of foodstuffs. Tupi-Guarani cultivators easily produced surpluses and it seemed possible to increase this output with the use of iron tools. Sixteenth-century accounts, for example, contain numerous references to indigenous villages that maintained abundant stocks of corn and manioc flour. Vicente Rodrigues, a Jesuit based in Pernambuco, wrote that “the heathens came from six and seven leagues away [drawn] by the fame of the Fathers, carrying corn [manioc] and whatever else they had to offer them…” A colleague of Rodrigues, also in Pernambuco, Antonio Pires stated that at one point there arrived at the mission “a headman from another village, who came laden with corn, along with six or eight blacks.” At the same time, in the south, the Guarani were known for the abundant quantities of foodstuffs they provided the Europeans. “Oftentimes, many Indians came with great presents of venison and fowl, fish, beeswax and honey,” wrote the Jesuit Leonardo Nunes in a summary description of the Carijó.⁵³

To the dismay of the colonists, however, Amerindians only provided provisions sporadically and in limited amounts, even as the Portuguese came to depend more and more on indigenous production and labor for their own sustenance. It is true that in the mid-sixteenth century barter relations flourished for a time, but each side attributed radically different meanings to these exchanges. The supply of foodstuffs by native peoples was not – as Alexander Marchant and subsequent authors have asserted – simply an economic response to market conditions.⁵⁴ Rather, both the acquisition and supply of goods had more to do with their symbolic value than their commercial significance. Taken out of context, the observations of the Jesuits cited above may lead to a mistaken idea of indigenous production at this crucial conjuncture. For example, Father Pires thus explained the offer of foodstuffs by an indigenous headman: “His understanding is that we will give him a long life and good health and means of sustenance without working as his sorcerers promise him.” Similarly, Leonardo Nunes revealed that the Guarani brought their “great presents” in the expectation of spiritual compensation on the part of the Jesuits.⁵⁵

Hence, it is worth emphasizing that barter only made sense to the degree that it responded to the internal dynamics of indigenous societies. Far from conforming to the context of a market economy in formation, the terms of exchange were linked intrinsically to the forging of alliances with the Europeans. Therefore, native peoples accepted and even promoted such relations as long as they advanced traditional objectives. Ironically, it was through this ostensibly conservative response that Tupi groups contributed to the increasingly rapid transformation of inter-group and Luso–indigenous relations.

Since barter proved an unreliable way to obtain basic foodstuffs, the Portuguese turned to the direct appropriation of Indian labor, mainly through outright slavery. At the outset, the acquisition of slaves was subordinated to the patterns of inter-group relations that existed in the area. However, with the increased presence of Europeans, these inter-group wars became saltos (“raids”) carried out for the express purpose of capturing slaves for colonial enterprises. In this respect, as suggested by Father Correia in the above-quoted passage, the most important result of shifting barter relations was the intensification of warfare between traditional enemies, such as the Tupinikin and Tupinambá, with disastrous consequences for the indigenous groups in question.

The Portuguese believed that the resulting increase in the numbers of war prisoners would result in a large market in slaves, and colonial legislation ended up encouraging this form of labor recruitment.⁵⁶ But war captives were not transformed into chattel slaves so easily. The Europeans soon faced resistance to the sale of prisoners not only among their captors but also among the captives themselves. For example, when the Jesuit João de Azpilcueta Navarro offered to purchase a Tupinambá prisoner about to be sacrificed, it was the victim who prevented the transaction from occurring: “he said not to sell him, because for him to endure such a death as a valiant captain was to fulfill his honor.”⁵⁷

Little by little, it became clear to the Portuguese that the transformation of prisoners into slaves would require the social and ritual redefinition of human sacrifice. Although most local Tupi groups struggled to preserve their traditions, Euro–indigenous relations ended up provoking significant changes. For example, after the arrival of the Jesuits some Tupinikin groups gave up cannibalism and provided their enemies with Christian burials. Anchieta, commenting upon the difficulty of eliminating the sacrifice of prisoners, wrote that, “among such a multitude of infidels, at least some few sheep abstain from eating their fellows.”⁵⁸

In the captaincy of São Vicente, the Portuguese sought to increase the supply of Indian labor through their alliance with the Tupinikin, which they transformed from a relationship of relative equality to one of subordination. The exact details of this transformation are unknown, but it seems clear that by the 1540s the Portuguese controlled some Tupinikin villages directly or indirectly. The role of Tibiriçá’s son-in-law, João Ramalho, was fundamental to the expansion of the influence and authority of the colonizers. According to Ulrich Schmidl, a German who visited a Luso-Tupinikin village in 1553, Ramalho “can assemble five thousand Indians in a single day.”⁵⁹ Having thus taken on the attributes of a Tupi headman, Ramalho made the perfect intermediary, assisting greatly in the shaping of Luso–indigenous relations in favor of the Portuguese.

Likewise, the specific case of João Ramalho and his relationship with Tibiriçá illustrates another crucial element in the process of Portuguese domination. In the sixteenth century, marriage and concubinage became important means by which the Portuguese established themselves among the indigenous peoples of South America. According to Father Nóbrega: “In this land there is a great sin, which is that almost all the men have their slave-women as concubines, and other free Indians whom they demand as wives for their male slaves, according to the custom of the land, which is to have many women.”⁶⁰ In São Vicente, concubinage took on such alarming proportions, at least in the eyes of the Jesuits, that Pedro Correia observed in disgust: “Not so long ago, I remember that [when] one asked a mamaluca [the daughter of a European father and an Amerindian mother, raised in settler society] what Indian women and female slaves are these that you bring with you; she would respond by saying that they were the women of her husband, whom she always brought along with her and watched over them like an abbess with her nuns.”⁶¹ However, this was not simply the adoption of native habits by Portuguese men in the absence of white women. More importantly, polygamy and concubinage reflected the alliances entered into by Portuguese and Amerindians, conferring prestige on colonists within the structure of indigenous society.⁶²

While the Portuguese achieved the support of some local headmen through these alliances, such strategies for consolidating power were not always successful. As we shall see shortly, the resistance of other Tupinikin elements to Portuguese advances provoked serious crises of authority among local groups, leading to intense factionalism. Even Tibiriçá, considered by the Jesuits to be an exemplary case of conversion, shocked and disgusted Anchieta when he insisted on sacrificing a Guaianá prisoner “in the heathenish fashion.” Even more disconcerting, at least from Anchieta’s point of view, was the enthusiastic response of the other Indians present, “even the catechized ones themselves, since it was exactly what they desired, and they shouted as one that he should kill.”⁶³

In spite of the difficulties they faced in establishing dominion over the Tupinikin, the Portuguese of São Vicente were successful in inciting their allies to intensify their conflicts with the Tupinambá. This escalation led various Tupinambá groups along the coast from Cabo Frio to São Vicente to enter into an alliance, which created a powerful movement of anti-Portuguese resistance. Between the 1540s and the 1560s, the entire coast and many parts of the area above the coastal escarpment were immersed in the War of the Tamoios.

The war reflected important changes in the structure of inter-group conflict in southern Brazil. While the initial outbreak of the war was rooted in the logic of precolonial relations and rivalries, warfare increasingly came to respond to the pressures and demands of early colonialism. These transformations, in turn, would have profound effects on the internal structures of indigenous societies. Jean de Léry, in recounting a French attempt to buy some Tememinó captives from the Tupinambá, sheds light on this issue:

Furthermore, it became clear to the Portuguese authorities that Indian insubordination and rebellion were directly proportional to European provocation, to the extent that the unchecked exploitation of indigenous labor led to armed resistance and demographic decline. Recognition of this connection between European demands and indigenous conduct contributed to a radical shift in Portuguese policy toward Brazil, in which the Crown became directly involved for the first time. In drawing up the standing orders (regimento) of Tomé de Sousa, the first Governor-General of Brazil, in 1548 the Crown not only established the foundations of colonial government, it also outlined the first formal statement of Indian policy, inaugurating a long series of laws, decrees, orders, and regulations that would yield an often ambiguous and contradictory body of legislation.⁶⁵ The new stance laid out in the regimento openly admitted that the failure of most captaincies was rooted in the illegitimate and violent processes of enslavement practiced by settlers. At the same time, it also implicitly recognized that the success of the colony ultimately depended on the subordination and exploitation of the indigenous population.⁶⁶

Jesuits and Settlers in the Occupation of the Plateau

The fleet that brought Tomé de Sousa to Brazil in 1549 carried among its passengers a handful of Jesuits who would represent the key to early Indian policy. In spite of their relative independence, since they answered to the head of their order in Rome to a greater extent than to the King of Portugal, and in spite of their subsequent economic power within Brazil, during these years the Jesuits served the interests of the Crown as instruments of its policy of colonial development. As a counterpoint to the settlers’ destructive practice of unrestrained enslavement, the Jesuits attempted to control and preserve “useful” Indians through a civilizing process that would transform them into productive workers. By establishing aldeamentos, or mission villages, the Jesuits offered an alternative method of conquest and assimilation. This project backfired, as we shall see below, and had the grave result of creating a bitter, conflictual relationship between Jesuits and settlers.

However, these conflicts only became heated years later. In the immediate context of the War of the Tamoios, despite serious differences of opinion, Jesuits and colonists collaborated in the formal settlement of the plateau in the 1550s. Frequent Tamoio raids on the fringes of Portuguese settlement curtailed the output of subsistence crops that supplied the sugar plantations, threatening the continued development of the coast. Father Manuel da Nóbrega, recognizing the need for complementary centers on the coast and in the interior, commented that the inhabitants of the coast, “while they have fish in abundance, do not have lands for subsistence crops nor for livestock, and above all they live in great unease because they are each day persecuted by their enemies and the foodstuffs they eat come from the Campo, ten, twelve leagues up the way…”⁶⁷ The Municipal Council of São Paulo, for its part, also highlighted this complementarity in a formal request made to the Crown appointee Estácio de Sá:

Along with creating a subsidiary economy, the formal settlement of the plateau aimed to provide new sources of captive labor. The Tamoio uprising made the enslavement of the Tupinambá an increasingly uncertain and costly business. Given this situation, the Portuguese turned their attention to another rival of their Tupinikin allies, the Carijó, who in many ways became the main reason for the presence of Jesuits as well as settlers in southern Brazil. It is worth pointing out that even before the founding of São Vicente there existed a modest trade in slaves along the southern coast, and so many Carijó slaves were to be found on the plantations of Santos and São Vicente at mid-century.⁶⁹

In effect, the consolidation of European settlement in the São Paulo region beginning in 1553 established a gateway to the sertão, a wilderness that offered settlers an attractive source of wealth in the form of Indians. Two almost simultaneous developments, the raising of the town of Santo André da Borda do Campo and the founding of the Jesuit college of São Paulo de Piratininga, laid the foundation for subsequent conflict between settlers and Jesuits over the Indians. On the one side, a group of settlers led by João Ramalho and their Tupinikin followers founded the town of Santo André, officially authorized by the proprietor of the captaincy in 1553, when a charter was granted and a Municipal Council installed to handle administrative matters. Santo André became the third town chartered in the captaincy, following São Vicente, founded in 1532, and Santos, established in 1545. The site for the new town, atop the coastal escarpment near the main trail that the Tupinikin used to reach the coast, afforded access to the vast expanses to the south and west of the captaincy, as the title Borda do Campo (“edge of the countryside”) suggests.⁷⁰ The settlers wasted no time in exploring those expanses, as shown by the voyage of one Francisco Vidal, who in 1553 journeyed to Paraguay, returning in a matter of months with twenty Guarani slaves. Although such commerce was frowned upon by the Crown, the records of the Municipal Council of Santo André point to constant contact with the Spanish of Paraguay.⁷¹

At about the same time, the Jesuits of São Vicente prepared to scale the coastal escarpment, as Father Nóbrega planned the consolidation of three Indian villages at the site of Tibiriçá’s village, between the Tamanduateí and Anhangabaú rivers, today the center of metropolitan São Paulo.⁷² The Jesuits, particularly Nóbrega, had high hopes for the expansion of Portuguese influence in São Vicente, in part due to the failure of most of the other captaincies, but especially because of the favorable reports they received regarding the indigenous population of southern Brazil. In 1553, the largest group of Jesuits in all of Brazil was to be found in São Vicente “as it is the land better suited to the conversion of the heathen than any of the others, because they never warred with the Christians, and through here is the gateway and the most certain and secure pathway to the peoples of the sertão of which we have reliable information.”⁷³

In keeping with Nóbrega’s plan, thirteen fathers and brothers of the Company of Jesus, many of them recently arrived on the fleet of 1553, scaled the Serra do Mar and founded the College of São Paulo de Piratininga on January 25, 1554. The college, at the same time as it sheltered the priests working among the local Indians, was to serve as an outpost from which to project the faith into the remote wilderness. However, as the Jesuits began to direct their energies toward the Carijó, they ended up on a collision course with the settlers, who sought these very same Carijó as a source of involuntary labor for their embryonic economic enterprises.

This inevitable conflict developed slowly, as settlers and Jesuits were forced to collaborate in the face of indigenous resistance. Throughout the 1550s, the Tamoio maintained the coast in a state of siege and occasionally launched attacks on the plateau, threatening the fledgling town of Santo André.⁷⁴ This situation became even more serious in that the permanent settlement of the plateau by the Portuguese provoked conflict among their Tupinikin allies. This factionalism had serious consequences: in 1557, the Jesuit Luís da Grã reported that the main Tupinikin villages were in the process of disintegration.⁷⁵

The resulting insecurity led Governor-General Mem de Sá to order the extinction of Santo André in 1558, instructing residents to move to the safer location of the College, where the town of São Paulo was formally established in 1560. The move was completed by 1562, and both settlers and Jesuits began to prepare for an onslaught of the Indians in revolt. Over the next three years, São Paulo was repeatedly threatened with extinction by the Tupinikin, led by Piquerobi and Jaguaranho, Tibiriçá’s brother and nephew, respectively, who encircled the new town.⁷⁶ The war caused heavy losses on both sides, with the Indians attacking and defending São Paulo bearing the brunt of the casualties.

Although the two sides were evenly matched in technological and strategic terms, the Europeans could count on a weapon far more powerful than firearms: disease. As in other parts of the sixteenth-century New World, epidemics had a devastating effect on the indigenous populations of the Brazilian coast. The first large-scale epidemic spread through the interior of the captaincy in 1554. “For these that we made Christians death came so quickly that it killed of ours three Headmen and many other male and female Indians,” wrote a Jesuit contemporary despairingly.⁷⁷ Sometimes ravaging various captaincies at one time, the deadly epidemics became ever more frequent in the second half of the century. In 1559, for example, a Jesuit recounted the outbreak of a disease with massive numbers of victims along the coast and in the interior, from Rio de Janeiro to Espírito Santo.⁷⁸ Large-scale outbreaks of smallpox and measles erupted in São Vicente during the conflicts of the early 1560s, at once decimating and demoralizing the native population.⁷⁹

In the meantime, the outcome of the broader conflict between the Portuguese and the Tupinambá was being decided along the coast, as the cumulative effect of diplomacy, war, and disease reduced the last Tamoios to allies, slaves, or corpses. The end of the war, which had produced such a negative outcome for indigenous peoples, illustrates some contradictions of indigenous warfare during this transitional period. The role of the Jesuits, above all of Nóbrega and Anchieta, was important, but not in the sense usually portrayed in the historiography. While the Jesuits did succeed in establishing an accord between certain warring groups, it did not result in peace. According to Anchieta’s account, the Tupinambá were disposed to negotiate precisely because the configuration of alliances was shifting in the context of the war. Aware of the rebellion of some Tupinikin factions against their erstwhile Portuguese allies, the Tupinambá saw the opportunity to establish an alliance with the Portuguese in order to strike at their traditional rivals – the Tupinikin. Indeed, Anchieta confessed that the only reason the Tamoio agreed to negotiate was “the great desire that they have to make war on their Tupi enemies, who up to now had been our friends, and just now have risen up against us…”⁸⁰

By 1567, when the Tamoio War ended, due to the aggressive military campaign led by Mem de Sá, the areas of Portuguese settlement in the captaincy of São Vicente had been pacified. With peace at hand, the prospect of economic development re-emerged and with it a struggle for Indian labor involving direct competition between the settlers and the Jesuits.⁸¹ Up to a certain point, this problem revolved around the delicate ethical question of the nature and freedom of the Indians, a question that has been taken out of its proper historical context in conventional scholarship. What was at stake was the means by which newly contacted groups were to be integrated into the emergent Luso-Brazilian society and economy. Each side questioned the legitimacy of the other, as well as the methods their opponents used to bring Indians from the sertão, which ranged from peaceful persuasion and attraction to more violent forms of coerced relocation. Once this uprooting was accomplished, the contending colonial agents – Jesuits on the one side, settlers on the other – vied for the right to administer the labor of Indians recently dislodged from their homelands.

Although a simplified rendering of these conflicts allows a convenient distinction between two neat categories of well-defined interests, the actual situation involved greater complexity, which explains at least in part the contradictions that came to characterize Portuguese Indian policy in Brazil. Just as the settlers did not uniformly advocate slavery as the sole form of colonial integration, the Jesuits were not altogether opposed to Indian captivity. After all, everyone – except for the Indians, of course – agreed that outright domination offered the only way to guarantee the social control and economic exploitation of the natives once and for all. The thinking of Manuel da Nóbrega provides a telling example of Jesuit ambivalence. Among others of his order, Nóbrega defended Indian and African slavery as necessary for the development of the colony, suggesting at one point that captivity would represent an advance for the “heathenry.” In discussing the most efficient way to execute the Jesuits’ plans, Nóbrega insisted that he wanted to see the heathen “subjected to and placed under the yoke of obedience to the Christians, so that we may impress upon them everything we want, because [the Indian] is of a sort who, once subdued, we may well inscribe Christ’s faith on their judgement and will, as was done in Peru and the Antilles.”⁸² Together with many of his contemporaries – priests and laypersons – Nóbrega upheld the basic notion that the Indians had to be dominated if Brazil was to prosper and that the only way to deal with particularly resistant groups was through the prosecution of “just wars” in which the Europeans’ enemies would be reduced to slavery.

For Nóbrega, then, despite his defense of the freedom of most Indians, indigenous slavery would be permissible and even desirable in certain cases, not only for defense or punishment, but also because a supply of legitimate captives would attract Christian settlers to the New World. According to Nóbrega, the definitive prescription for development would require that “the heathen either be lorded over or driven off…”⁸³ Anchieta, for his part, expressed some frustration with the mixed results of his efforts among the Tupinikin of Piratininga, echoing the position of his mentor: “One cannot expect nor obtain anything in all this land with regard to the conversion of the heathens without many Christians coming here, who dedicating themselves and their lives to the will of God, will subject the Indians to the yoke of slavery and compel them to accept the banner of Christ.”⁸⁴

These considerations helped shape the first major legislative statement by the Crown on the Indian question, the law of March 20, 1570, which sought to regulate, but not outlaw, Indian slavery.⁸⁵ The new statute designated the legitimate means of acquiring Indian captives, restricting these to just wars duly authorized by the King or governor and the ransom of captives who would otherwise perish in anthropophagous rituals. All Indians captured through other means were declared free. The law had little effect on actual relations between colonists and Indians, as the gaping loophole of just war opened the way to abuses, but it did reflect the conciliatory tone adopted by an ambivalent Crown caught between Jesuit and settler interests. The posture in favor of Indian freedom certainly responded to the appeals of the Jesuits Luís da Grã and José de Anchieta, who sat on a commission organized by the Crown in 1566 to discuss the Indian question, from which the 1570 law emerged. At the same time, the just war clause emerged as an answer to the settlers’ demands for slaves, while falling within the limits accepted by the Jesuits. This clause, well known on the Iberian Peninsula, had been first evoked in Brazil by Governor-General Mem de Sá in 1562, when he declared the entire Caeté people subject to enslavement as punishment for one group having killed and allegedly eaten Brazil’s first bishop, who bore the appetizing name of Sardinha.⁸⁶

Jesuit Counterpoint

Though the early Indian legislation of the sixteenth century treated the issues of warfare and captivity explicitly and in a detailed fashion, it was much less clear with respect to the distribution and regulation of labor. The destructive impact of war led the Portuguese to seek alternative ways of subordinating and transforming native peoples, including through missionary work. In creating a network of mission villages (aldeamentos), the Jesuits sought to restructure indigenous societies in order to provide a comprehensive solution to the problems of Indian domination and labor control. While the Jesuit project never fully met its goals, it became one of the pillars of Indian policy in colonial Brazil.⁸⁷

The first mission village of the region, though not founded as such, was Piratininga, organized around Tibiriçá’s village in 1554. However, it would seem that the population of the settlement never amounted to much, even by the standards of the time. In September 1556, Anchieta reported that only 36 Indians had been baptized, some of them in extremis. Over the same period, the priests only took on 130 Indians for catechism, “of every age and of both sexes.”⁸⁸

In the 1560s, with the founding of the town of São Paulo, three more mission villages were established: São Miguel, Nossa Senhora dos Pinheiros, and Itaquaquecetuba, all on the plateau near the new town, sheltering mainly Tupinikin and Guaianá. A fourth Jesuit mission village, Nossa Senhora da Conceição, became the home of a group of Indians identified as “Guarulhos,” who were gathered there by the priests around 1580. The only mission village established on the coast of São Vicente in the sixteenth century was São João, which emerged alongside the town of Itanhaem in the 1560s and was founded and inhabited almost exclusively by Carijó.⁸⁹

These new settlements soon replaced the independent villages, transferring control over indigenous land and labor into Portuguese hands. Though in principle designed to protect the declining population of Indians, in effect the mission villages hastened the disintegration of their communities. As the Jesuits subordinated new groups to their administration, the mission villages became improvised, unstable concentrations of Indians from diverse societies. Even so, in the early years at least, the Jesuits’ correspondence shows a certain optimism regarding the potential for growth of the mission villages. In 1583, for example, Father Gouveia recorded that São Miguel and Pinheiros had a combined population of more than 500 souls, roughly matching the European population of the region, which he calculated at 120 households.⁹⁰ Two years later, another priest wrote enthusiastically of a large group of Maromini (Guarulhos) recently “reduced” and placed in a mission village alongside Guaianá, Carijó, and “Ibirabaquiyara” (probably southern Kayapó) Indians.⁹¹ Finally, reports of baptisms, though numerically unspecific, also suggest a period of growth for the mission villages in the 1570s and 1580s.⁹²

In the sixteenth century, the early but illusory promise of the Jesuit project impressed not only the missionaries, but also the Crown and even some settlers. According to an early seventeenth-century defender of the system, the mission villages were crucial to the defense of the sugar-producing zones of the northeast against external threats, such as those posed by the seaborne Dutch and English, as well as internal ones, namely those presented by the “Tapuias” of the interior and by runaway African slaves.⁹³ For the settlers, the existence of thriving, productive mission villages would provide a reserve of free labor for the colonial economy, thus reconciling the ideal of Indian freedom with the more general goal of developing the colony. Apparently pleased with such a prospect, Bishop Antonio Barreiro, addressing the pope in 1582, pointed out that while the Jesuits continued to defend the liberty of unjustly captured Indians, they at the same time generously served secular interests with their mission villages, “where they also assist the settlers in the planting of their cane and provisions and other things needed on their plantations.”⁹⁴

For their part, the settlers were probably willing to accept the mission-village system as an alternative to slavery so long as it provided cheap and abundant labor. In its ideal form, early Indian policy sought to develop a labor structure in which mission Indians would work for settlers through a system of contract labor. The mission village would provide the basic structures necessary for the reproduction of the labor force by maintaining certain aspects of precolonial social organization – including housing, subsistence agriculture, family bonds, and even political leadership, modified, of course, by the Jesuits’ cultural project. Wages would be set well below the costs of reproduction of the labor force, which would be absorbed by these mission-village structures. Nevertheless, as we shall see, the mission villages were not able to fulfill the settlers’ demands for labor.

Along with establishing a mechanism for access to indigenous labor, the mission-village project also addressed the question of Indian lands. Each village was apportioned a considerable amount of land, ostensibly intended to provide a base for Indian subsistence. At the same time, however, the land grants carried the less benevolent objective of restricting Indians to specific areas, thus giving European settlers access to lands previously occupied by native groups. The two major mission villages of the region, São Miguel and Pinheiros, received land grants in 1580, with the governor of the captaincy of São Vicente giving 6 leagues square (approximately 1,100 square kilometers) to each. While these grants were fairly large, they in no way reflected precolonial patterns of land use. The grant document itself points to radical alterations in the definition of property rights, as the former occupants of all of the land were now forced to petition for rights to a limited portion of it. In their petition, the Pinheiros Indians pointed out that the land they cultivated for the Jesuits was no longer viable and thus they were requesting title to land in Carapicuíba, some kilometers from the mission village, sandwiched between the properties of two prominent settlers, Domingos Luís Grou and Antonio Preto.⁹⁵ For their part, the Indians of São Miguel asked for lands more clearly associated with the indigenous past, as they sought title to lands near Ururaí, Piquerobi’s old village. It is worth emphasizing, however, that the governor authorized these grants, not on the basis of the Indians’ traditional rights to land, but rather because “most of them are Christians and have their churches and are always prepared to help and defend the land and to sustain it.”⁹⁶

Despite early expectations, the mission project turned out to be a miserable failure from almost every perspective. For the settlers, even during the sixteenth century, when the economy grew slowly and labor demands remained relatively modest, restricted access to Indian labor proved both inadequate and irritating. While visiting the mission villages of the south toward the end of the century, a Jesuit described the way in which labor was distributed: “[The Fathers] distribute the Indian servants [índios de serviço] and make themselves recipients of the daily wage… Whoever comes to request Indians for service asks the Padre, who calls the headman, who along with the Portuguese goes and gets them and then they agree on payment.”⁹⁷ Clearly, the settlers wished to deal directly with the Indians, but to their great annoyance, the Jesuits always acted as intermediaries. In 1598, with tensions rising, the principal colonists protested to the Municipal Council of São Paulo against the “great oppression” they suffered at the hands of the Jesuits and the authorities, who impeded their direct negotiation with the mission-village Indians (their “friends and neighbors”), it being required that they first secure permission from the governor, who seldom visited the town. They proposed, in this instance, that the Council allow “the men to bring domesticated Indians into their service for a little while for small tasks” with the permission of any council member, thus circumventing the governor’s authority.⁹⁸ This measure would not be sufficient, however, because even after having dispensed with the matter of the governor’s authorization, the settlers would have to face the Jesuits in the mission villages before extracting the labor they sought so persistently.

By the early seventeenth century, it became clear that the experiment with free labor had failed. Enraged by the obstacles imposed by the Jesuits, a large group of colonists met before the Municipal Council in 1612, issuing a harsh indictment of the mission villages. The basic problem, they complained, lay in the fact that mission-village labor was extremely unreliable. Most Indians refused to work for the settlers, and even those who agreed generally did not comply with the terms that had been laid out, returning to the village as soon as they received their pay (half of which had to be handed over in advance) without carrying out their tasks to the satisfaction of the settlers. The colonists attributed this resistance to the absolute control exercised by the Jesuits: “Now a rumor is spreading among said heathen saying that they recognize no one but the padres as their superiors and said padres are saying that the villages are theirs and that they are lords in both the temporal and the spiritual…” Ever more indignant, the settlers argued that under existing conditions the Indians were useless and that they posed a threat to the colony, since their concentration and isolation could allow them “to rise up against the whites and townspeople as they have done in this captaincy and in other parts of this state.” Finally, the settlers resolved that the mission villages should receive “neither slaves nor servants of whites unless there are in all [mission villages] lay captains who take special care and are sufficient to avoid [rebellion] and to put in order the things described above…”⁹⁹

In spite of this final plea, the settlers recognized that even if the practical obstacles to their access to mission-village labor were removed, this source would not be enough to meet their growing need for workers. The mission villages failed to sustain and reproduce a reserve labor force. Already in the 1560s, the Jesuits feared for the survival of the mission villages, frequently struck by outbreaks of epidemic disease: “From time to time there are great dyings-off [mortandades] among them, as occurred a little while ago, when pieces of flesh fell from them, with great sufferings and a most foul stench,” the priest Baltasar Fernandes observed somberly.¹⁰⁰ He was undoubtedly referring to the great smallpox epidemic that carried off much of the local population in 1653, striking residents of the new and unstable mission villages particularly harshly.

With their high mortality rates, the mission villages depended upon the constant introduction of new groups of previously uncontacted Indians to replenish their populations. As a result, the missions came to be characterized by their mixture of peoples and cultures, which, on the one hand, contributed to the Jesuit strategy of homogenization, but on the other tore apart particular indigenous societies. Indeed, in their attempts to make the mission villages the ideal medium for the manipulation and control of indigenous peoples, the Jesuits meticulously dismantled fundamental elements of the social organization and cultural orientation of diverse local groups, replacing them with radically different patterns. For example, the creation of permanent, fixed settlements with absolute territorial boundaries contrasted greatly with the conventional model in which villages were subject to periodic fragmentation and recomposition. The spatial organization of the missions, based on a European model and centered upon a church on a central square, also differed greatly from the organizational models of precolonial villages. The replacement of multi-family domestic units with nuclear households and the prohibition of polygamy had a significant impact, while the suppression of most native rites and the concomitant introduction of Christian rituals restructured the basic contours of Indian existence. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, the Jesuits attempted to inculcate a totally new conception of time and work into their Indian subordinates, in which the sexual division of labor and the regimentation of productive activities stood in marked contrast to precolonial patterns.¹⁰¹

In general, the Jesuits focused their efforts on three areas: the conversion of headmen, the indoctrination of the young, and the elimination of the shamans. But they faced resistance at every step, to a greater or lesser degree. Indeed, along with the devastating effects of epidemic disease, indigenous resistance was the main obstacle to the missionary project. The Jesuits, like other Europeans, counted naively on the blind acceptance of Christianity by their Brazilian flock: their accounts are filled with reports of mass baptisms, supposed miracles, and dramatic professions of faith by indigenous leaders. But their efforts did not always produce the desired effect, and even a headman’s profession of faith did not guarantee the conversion of his followers. Nóbrega, for example, citing a case from Bahia, reported that a chief came “to be on bad terms with all his relatives for having accepted conversion and collaborated with the priests.”¹⁰²

During the early years, in part due to the resistance of older Indians, but also with the goal of subverting traditional forms of indigenous education, the Jesuits dedicated much of their energy to the education of boys.¹⁰³ However, the Jesuit fathers found it difficult to coordinate their efforts with the daily routines of their young catechumens. Referring to the mission village of São João, Nóbrega confessed that the boys only attended lessons in religion, reading, and music for three or four hours per day, after having performed other tasks, such as hunting and fishing. After lessons, the fathers would assemble the other inhabitants of the mission village for mass, which always included the singing of religious songs by the boys’ choir. To bring the day’s activities to their end, a final bell would ring out in the night, as the boys would be passing on their learning to the elder generation.¹⁰⁴ But even this intensive program, according to Anchieta, ended up having little effect. Initial successes often came undone at adolescence when, to the Jesuits’ displeasure, many youths adopted their elders’ customs.¹⁰⁵

Throughout the sixteenth century, the missionaries’ main line of attack was directed against the shamans and wandering prophets, who represented the last and most powerful line of defense of indigenous traditions. The offensive against the “sorcerers” was justified by the certainty that the charismatic presence and influence of the shamans threatened to subvert the priests’ work. Anchieta observed at one point that the Jesuits in São Paulo found their strongest rival in a charismatic prophet “whom all follow and venerate as a great saint” and who intended to destroy the Catholic Church.¹⁰⁶ Within the mission villages, according to Nóbrega, the shamans spread the word that the holy water administered during baptisms was the cause of the illnesses that were laying waste to the native populations.¹⁰⁷

The association between epidemic disease and Jesuit proselytizing went beyond the preaching of the shamans. According to one priest: “In the Village with the old women there is nothing that we can do to make them want to receive baptism, because they are very certain that death will strike them down with baptism.”¹⁰⁸ There was some basis for this fear, considering that the fathers’ baptismal ceremonies often gathered together Indians on the verge of death. Curiously, the priests themselves had their own suspicions regarding the efficacy of baptism. After witnessing innumerable examples of Indians who readopted their “heathen ways” after conversion, Father Afonso Brás, then working among the Tupinikin and Tememinó in Porto Seguro and Espírito Santo, affirmed: “I don’t bother to baptize these heathen here so readily, unless they ask me many times, because I worry about their inconstancy and steadfastness, except when they are about to die.”¹⁰⁹

In this sense, it was not enough to discredit the shamans; the Jesuits would also have to take on the role of charismatic spiritual leader. Indeed, in their missionary activities, the Jesuits frequently adopted practices they believed would work well because they resembled precolonial practices. It was common, for example, for the Jesuits to preach at dawn, in the manner of the headmen and shamans. Likewise, Anchieta, in seeking to convert some Tupinambá villages along the coast, employed a rhetoric that was curiously similar to that of the charismatic shamans he so despised. “Speaking in a loud voice around their houses as is their custom,” Anchieta proposed “that we want to stay among them and teach them the things of God, so that He may give them foodstuffs in abundance, health, and victory over their enemies and other similar things.”¹¹⁰ The priests also perceived that baptism, with its magical implications for the Indians, could serve to subvert certain rituals, especially cannibalism. Thus, when visiting a Tupinikin village in the interior of the captaincy in 1554, the Jesuits Nóbrega and Pedro Correia offered to baptize some captives as they were about to be sacrificed. The Tupinikin, however, did not allow the baptisms to occur, “saying that if they were killed after they were baptized, everyone who killed them and who ate of their flesh would die…”¹¹¹ In 1560, when Indians killed two captives in a village near the town of São Paulo, they refused to carry out the act of ritual cannibalism because Father Luís da Grã had baptized the victims earlier.¹¹²

In spite of the destructive impact that the missionary project had on indigenous societies, Indian groups were able to preserve at least some vestiges of their political organization and ethnic identity through the sixteenth-century transition to the mission-village regime. It would seem that the authority of the headman was preserved, providing the basis for some autonomy on the part of the different ethnic groups that made up the mission-village population. While the Portuguese found it necessary to maintain the leadership of the headmen in order to better control the broader subject population, this afforded the Indians a channel for protests and the airing of grievances. The chiefs, even while accepting their subordination to the Jesuits and lay authorities, could use the threat of violence to counterbalance unilateral impositions by the colonists. In 1607, for example, the headmen of the mission villages appeared before the Municipal Council of São Paulo to protest the appointment of one João Soares as captain of the Indians. After establishing that “they always have and always will obey the orders of captains and justices,” the Indian leaders warned that Soares’s presence in the mission villages would not be tolerated, “because the said João Soares had done them many injuries and does so each day, they do not want to obey him because they cannot suffer more than they have already suffered…” They complained further that Soares would send Indians to the coast, laden with goods, “without paying them for their labors.” In addition to these abuses, Soares and his sons took mission-village women into their private homes. Finally, the Indians “could not have a single root of manioc nor livestock, all because of this João Soares…” Thus outraged with Soares, the Indians elected Antonio Obozio, “so that he as the eldest might speak for all,” to issue an ultimatum to the Council: if measures were not taken immediately, the Indians would rebel against the Europeans’ authority and kill João Soares. Prudently, the members of the Council thought it best to notify Soares that if he did not stay away from the mission villages, he would suffer a hefty fine.¹¹³

In effect, the threat of unrest or outright rebellion became the ultimate measure of Indian resistance to Portuguese rule. In the long run, resistance furnished a powerful argument in favor of slavery as the most viable formula for Luso–Indian relations. On various occasions throughout the sixteenth century, the threat of resistance materialized in substantive violence, which, in turn, led to brutal repression and enslavement. As early as the 1550s, the Jesuits’ fear of losing all that they had managed to build to the “inconstancy” of the Indians was strongly reinforced by events at Maniçoba, a village located some hundred kilometers from the chapel of São Paulo. In 1554, the Tupinikin there rebelled, threatening to kill the priest Gregório Serrão, who ended up being expelled from the village. It would appear that the Indians refused to tolerate the Jesuits’ meddling in their warfare and sacrifice.¹¹⁴

This unsettled situation was exacerbated by inter-ethnic rivalries within the mission villages. In the 1590s, for example, factional violence erupted in São Miguel. More serious conflicts developed in the recently founded village of Barueri in 1611–1612, initially between Carijó and Tupinikin, and later between Carijó and Pé Largo (possibly Guaianá). Involving between 500 and 600 Indians, these conflicts caused great alarm among the white population, compelling the authorities to seek a solution to the conflict by relocating one faction to another mission village.¹¹⁵ However, the most alarming occurrence was the revolt of 1590, in which the Indians of the Pinheiros mission village joined forces with warriors from independent villages in a general uprising against the Jesuits and the settlers. While loss of life and property was considerable, what most worried the colonists was the symbolic act of the destruction of the image of Our Lady of the Rosary, patron saint of the mission village, for it represented the rejection of Christianity and colonial authority.¹¹⁶

The principal justification for the mission-village project, controlling the Indians and preparing them for productive service, thus vanished. In attempting to manipulate elements of indigenous history and tradition, the Jesuits, with their mission-village project, ended by running up against the resistance of the Tupinikin, Carijó, Guaianá, and Guarulhos, among others. Instead of producing workers who would contribute to the development of the colony, the mission villages of São Paulo succeeded only in creating marginal communities of desolate Indians, weakened by diseases brought from abroad and barely able to provide for their own survival. It was in this context that the settlers resolved to take the problem of Indian labor into their own hands.

Colonists on the Offensive

As it became increasingly clear that the mission-village project was insufficient as a means of providing a labor force, the colonists intensified other means of acquiring Indians for their service. Beginning in the 1580s, despite the restrictions imposed by Portuguese legislation, the settlers began to favor the direct appropriation of indigenous laborers through predatory expeditions into the wilderness. Actually, strict observance of the letter of the law was never among the favorite practices of the Paulistas. While the law of 1570 and subsequent legislation made allowance for slavery through the institution of just war, the captives that the Paulistas sought did not always match the provisions of the law.

Most of the groups that qualified as indomitable and subject to just war were so-called Tapuia, with the law of 1570 explicitly singling out the Aimoré, a denomination that included various Gê peoples who arduously resisted Portuguese expansion on the Bahian coast. From early on, though, the settlers showed a clear preference for Tupi and Guarani captives, for various reasons: greater demographic density, easier communication using the Tupian lingua geral spoken on much of the coast, and the greater likelihood of forming alliances; with the latter contacts established, the prospect of new captives vindicated their interest. The issue of labor also stood out in the somewhat stereotyped distinction between Tupi and Tapuia. Referring to the Guaianá of São Paulo, Gabriel Soares de Sousa remarked: “and whoever happens to have a Guaianá slave expects no service from him, because they are a people lazy by nature and do not know how to work.”¹¹⁷

Until the mid-eighteenth century, colonists departing for the wilderness in search of captives employed this dichotomous distinction. Innumerable denunciations emerged throughout this long period, indicating that the settlers set out with the aim of subduing the most treacherous, barbarous, and indomitable peoples and bringing them into the bosom of the Church, but returned, more often than not, with Tupi captives, most of them women and children. Commenting on the activities of a troop of Paulistas who were recruited to combat the dreaded “Tapuias of Corso” in the late seventeenth century, the Governor-General explained to the Crown: “The Paulistas leave their land, and send out various bands throughout the wilderness, with no other intent but to capture heathen of the lingua geral, who are the ones who are already domesticated, and they do not bother with the Corso heathen, because these are no good for anything.”¹¹⁸

A similar strategy, of taking Tupi and Guarani captives in the midst of just wars, had already manifested itself in the sixteenth century in the captaincy of São Vicente. The declaration of a just war against the Carijó in 1585 served as a precursor to what soon became general practice. At that time, the settlers of São Vicente, Santos, and São Paulo drafted a petition to the governor of the captaincy requesting authorization to organize a war party against the Carijó in the interior of the captaincy. The document made a point of detailing the real motive behind the enterprise: before recounting the hostilities perpetrated by the Carijó, the petition detailed the desperate need for slaves in the captaincy, particularly on the sugar-producing coast. Pointing out that 2,000 slaves had perished from disease in the previous six years, the settlers cautioned that without slaves they could not maintain commodity production, thus depriving the Crown of valuable tithes. Having established this basic need, the settlers sent a request to the governor

Based on isolated incidents involving specific factions, this description of the Carijó as a barbarous and violent people contrasted sharply with the comments of settlers and missionaries alike, who considered the Guarani to be superior to other indigenous peoples. Furthermore, it did not justify indiscriminate war against all Carijó, as this generic denomination included groups that were allied with the Portuguese. In short, the settlers clearly sought to create a situation where they could legally and unrestrictedly fill their labor needs with the coveted Guarani.

A few weeks after the petition was submitted, Governor Jerônimo Leitão summoned representatives of the Municipal Councils of the three towns to a meeting at the Engenho São Jorge, in São Vicente, with the aim of delineating the conditions of a just war. Seeking to avoid any interference on the part of the Jesuits, the governor had called upon the vicar of São Vicente to represent the clergy, thus conferring greater legitimacy upon the resolution that the meeting produced. This resolution established that captives taken in battle would be divided between the three towns, with the municipal councils charged with distributing them among the settlers “for them to indoctrinate them and give them good treatment as free heathen and for them to help them in their service in what is licit…”¹²⁰ The treatment of the Indians as “free heathen” illustrates the contradictory nature of the whole process, for had the war really been just, following the strictures of the law of 1570, the settlers could have held the captives as legitimate slaves.

In effect, the strategy of legitimating the recruitment of Indian slaves through just war hardly disguised the settlers’ aim of rapidly increasing their holdings of Guarani and non-Guarani captives.¹²¹ The 1585 expedition, in this sense, reflected a general trend, on the upswing through the 1580s, as the settlers intensified their raids into the sertão, including private raids and expeditions sanctioned by representatives of the Crown. Jerônimo Leitão, for example, had already led an attack against the Tememinó in 1581, while other settlers organized forays of their own along the Tietê and Paraíba river valleys.

These actions provoked a new wave of unrest at the edges of Portuguese settlement, as Guaianá, Guarulhos, and Tupinikin groups received Europeans and their indigenous agents with increasing violence. In 1583, the Municipal Council of São Paulo warned settlers to avoid Guaianá villages because of the dangers involved. Four years later, the Council discussed the imminent danger of “there being here many Guaianá heathen and thus the greater part of the heathen of the sertão [who] speak badly [i.e., in non-Tupi languages] and are up in arms…”¹²² More than ever before, indigenous resistance was explicitly tied to the question of slavery. In 1590, according to the Municipal Council, “all of the villages of the sertão of this captaincy joined together” to repel the European presence in the region. At that time, an allied force of Guaianá and Tupinikin destroyed an expedition of fifty men led by Domingos Luís Grou and Antonio Macedo, near where the town of Mogi das Cruzes would later be founded.¹²³ Following this victory, these allied indigenous groups launched new attacks on Portuguese farms along the Pinheiros River and, with the support of the residents of the Pinheiros mission village, staged a surprisingly broad-based rebellion against European control of the region. One year later, to the west of the town of São Paulo, at the locale called Parnaíba, Indians destroyed another slaving expedition on the Tietê River.¹²⁴

The increasing hostility of the Indians was used to justify the organization of punitive forces that, in a wave of reprisals between 1590 and 1595, ended up destroying or enslaving the native population within a radius of at least 60 kilometers from the town. The principal victims, despite the energetic protests of the Jesuits, were the Tupinikin, who were singled out “because they were our neighbors and were friends with us and were our compadres and they interacted with us enjoying our barter goods and friendliness and this for many years…”¹²⁵ At the same time, the Guaianá and Guarulhos retreated to the Paraíba Valley or beyond the Cantareira Range, to become involved with the Paulistas again only in the 1640s.

Conclusion

With the close of the sixteenth century, the first cycle of Luso–indigenous relations came to an end. In the short span of two generations, the principal inhabitants of the São Paulo region had witnessed the destruction of their villages and the disintegration of their societies. The few who managed to survive these calamities found themselves subjected to the settlers or to the Jesuits. For the Portuguese, the significance of the conquest was twofold. While on the one hand, it had freed up lands for future settlement, on the other, in diminishing and destroying the local labor force, it imposed the need to introduce workers from other regions, which would mean the redefinition of the role and identity of the Indian in colonial society.

Over the course of the first century of Portuguese settlement in the captaincy of São Vicente, the character of Luso–indigenous relations underwent a profound transformation. During much of the sixteenth century, the dominant trend in these relations was defined by questions of alliance and exchange, and by the struggle for possession of the land. Though the appropriation of Indian labor was also an important consideration during this period, it too remained subordinate to the complex web of pre-existing inter-ethnic relations. Contact, however, in setting off a process of disintegration among indigenous societies, began to irreversibly shift the balance in favor of Portuguese domination. The disintegration of local structures was hastened by demographic decline resulting from disease and warfare, which then allowed the Portuguese to dominate significant sectors of the indigenous population. By the end of the century, vast stretches of land that had been Tupinikin and Guaianá territory lay securely in the hands of the conquerors.

The fact that the Portuguese were unable to integrate indigenous societies into the colonial sphere without destroying them resulted in the elaboration of historically new forms of labor, of which Indian and African slavery proved the most satisfactory from the colonial point of view. African slavery was ultimately favored for moral, legal, and commercial reasons, especially on the sugar-producing coast. In São Paulo, the settlers did not move toward large-scale African slavery in the seventeenth century, but they did create a labor system that was qualitatively, quantitatively, and institutionally different from the experiments of the first century. In order to expand the productive base of the colony, the Paulistas began to introduce larger numbers of Indians, from increasingly faraway lands. This mass of new captives, lacking any ancestral ties to the land where they now lived, would occupy the base of a colonial society defined by the social relations that drove the new system of production.