A Tupi Wargames Army

By Chris Peers

A few years ago, in an article in the (very) occasional Wargames World, I discussed briefly some of the native tribes of Brazil around the time of the Portuguese conquest. What I had in mind at the time were some scenarios for skirmish games, but I also remarked that the Tupinambá and some of their relatives, who could field armies of several thousand warriors, and at least occasionally fought proper stand-up battles, might make an effective ”mainstream” Renaissance army. Naturally, no one took much notice at the time, but since then a few encouraging things have happened. There is a DBM Army List (no. 29 in Book 4, ”Tupi 1200AD-1601AD”) which prescribes a useful if unsubtle mixture of warband and bows, and might give a more conventional medieval army some problems in difficult terrain. There is going to be a list in one of the forthcoming DBR books, which will have basically the same mix but be a bit more effective because of the provision for Portuguese allies, and (probably) Bows (Superior). I think the new WRG 7th Edition Ancients lists also cover the subject, although I don’t have a copy to hand. (And of course the army could be used with most other rule sets covering the period 1200-1600 AD. The notes below will provide some ideas on how the Tupi could be classified, whatever system you prefer.) And finally, there are some figures being produced by Stratagem in 25mm, which to judge from what I have seen so far will look very nice indeed when they are finished. So – and especially because a few adventurous people have actually asked me for some further information on the DBM list with a view to producing an army – I offer the following brief notes for the benefit of anyone else who would like to try something a bit different from the usual exotics.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

There are no written records in pre-conquest Brazil, so everything which happened before the 16th century must be deduced from the evidence of archaeology, linguistics and the occasional surviving oral tradition. It used to be thought that the tropical jungle of the Amazon Basin had always been the backwater that it is today. However, modern research suggests that the flood plain of the Amazon – a fertile area which encouraged the growth of dense farming and fishing populations – was a source of waves of violent outward migration from not long after agriculture was first introduced there. Perhaps as early as 1000 BC the first conquerors, who spoke dialects of the Arawakan language group, had begun to spread out from the middle Amazon across the rest of South America. Being more numerous and better organised than the earlier inhabitants, they kicked them out of the best farming areas, and left their traces in the form of Arawakan-speaking enclaves as far afield as Paraguay and the Bahamas, which survived until modern times.

At a later but still uncertain date, another people, identified by the Tupi group of languages, did the same thing from a base slightly further downstream. Luckily for historians – if not for their neighbours – the Tupi were still expanding when the Europeans arrived. Consequently we have eyewitness accounts of their mode of warfare, which may also be a guide to the methods of their predecessors. The geographical scope of the Tupi campaigns of conquest was immense, eventually covering an area as big as the whole of Europe. It is tempting to compare them with the later expansion of the Zulus, although the name of the hypothetical Tupi “Shaka” who started off the process is lost to us. Moving south at first from the Amazon, the new invaders carved out a second base of operations in Paraguay and eastern Bolivia, and from there swung northwards again along the Atlantic coast of Brazil. This second phase of expansion probably got under way between about 1000 and 1200 AD. These dates are based on the introduction of pottery – normally associated with farmers like the Tupi - into southern Brazil. They are therefore very approximate and heavily reliant on informed guesswork, but are enough to justify starting the DBM list in 1200, making it- at least chronologically – a suitable opponent for most medieval armies. The invaders gradually caused the displacement of the previous inhabitants – who were hunters rather than farmers, and lived in small nomadic groups – into swampy refuges on the coast or into the dry and barren interior. In the early 16th century, when the Portuguese arrived, various Tupi tribes were in possession of almost the entire coast from the Amazon southwards, still happily fighting the survivors of the earlier peoples – whom they called ”Tapuia” or ”Aimoré” – as well as each other.

THE TUPI AT WAR

Needless to say, the architects of such an expansion were leading practitioners of the art of war as it was known in Stone Age America. The nominal cause of their campaigns was a system of blood-feuds and vendettas, which meant that any wrong or insult could escalate into an endless cycle of revenge raids and counter-raids. As well as victimising outsiders, the Tupi were also in the habit of fighting amongst themselves, so by 1500 AD they had fragmented into several different tribes which – although betraying their recent common ancestry by their similar languages – were by now bitterly hostile to each other. Among these tribes were the Tupina, Tupinambá, Tamoio, Tupinikin, Temimino, Tobajara and Potiguar. Life was relatively easy for the Tupi in the lush coastal forests, giving them plenty of leisure time in which to pursue their cultural interests. As one European visitor put it, ”they live at their ease, with no preoccupation other than eating, drinking and killing people” (Quoted in J. Hemming, Red Gold. Other quotations in this article are from the same invaluable source. See my Wargames World article for a further note on sources). In the words of another observer, ”There is no nation on earth so inclined to war... Four or five hundred leagues are nothing to them to go and attack their enemies and capture slaves”. These slaves were lucky if the worst that happened to them was to be put to work: captured warriors were routinely eaten in ritual cannibal feasts. This was meant as a deadly insult to the victim’s tribe – which naturally was obliged to avenge him in a similar manner, thus ensuring that the fun never stopped.

There was in fact a strange kind of sense in this bizarre lifestyle. There were no sizeable domestic animals in pre-Columbian Brazil apart from dogs, and large wild game was relatively scarce. Cannibalism meant that there was always at least some meat available, and the suppliers of it were those who could perhaps be spared most easily – young men inexperienced or dozy enough to let themselves be captured. As a Miranya chief would later explain to a horrified 19th century explorer: ”When I kill an enemy, it is better to eat him than to let him rot: for big game is rare, since it does not lay eggs as turtles do.” At the same time, the incessant warfare kept the population in check The natives had no horses, of course, and used no armour, although some did have shields made of bark or tapir-hide. Their weapons were long bows – which could send an arrow right through a man, and with which they were frequently described as better and quicker shots than English longbowmen – and hard wooden clubs, which were generally carved into shapes resembling swords or paddles. They would draw up in opposing lines, shoot off their arrows at ranges of up to 300 yards, and then get stuck in, wielding their clubs two-handed. The lack of finesse is suggested by a late 16th century Englishman’s account of the previously unheard-of tactics which he introduced to the Tamoio:

”When I saw the rusticall manner of their fight, I taught them how to set themselves in Battaile, and to lye in ambush, and how to retire and draw their enemies into a snare: by this meanes we had alwayes the upper hand of our enemies...”

Anyone who still thinks that ”primitive*’ warfare was all posturing and ritual, liable to be abandoned as soon as anybody got hurt, should take note of the testimony of Jean de Léry, a Calvinist missionary who was an eyewitness of one of their battles.:

”One could scarcely believe how cruel and terrible the combat was... If any of them were hit, as several were, they tore (the arrows) from their bodies with marvellous courage... But this did not prevent them returning, all wounded, to the combat... When they were finally in a melee with their great wooden swords and clubs, they charged one another with mighty two-handed blows. If they struck an enemy’s head they did not just knock  him to the ground, but slaughtered him as one of our butchers fells an ox... These Americans are so furious in their wars that they fight on without stopping as long as they can move arms and legs, never retreating or turning tail... ” Against European enemies they were usually outclassed by firearms, but despite heavy losses they continued to fight with the same fanaticism which they showed against their Indian foes, and a Tupi charge was not something which its victims easily forgot. A Portuguese soldier who survived an ambush by Potiguar in 1584 lamented: ”No one can resist the fury of this nation of victorious heathen. They are personally more spirited than any others, and so brave that they do not fear death.” Even in the 1640s, when they had been mostly tamed and were fighting as allies of the Portuguese, they terrified the Dutch, to whom they were ”savages, coming so agilely and fearlessly with ferocious appearance, naked, firing immense arrows, these horrible barbarians with no tapir-hide other than their own skins”.

BUILDING A TUPI ARMY

Sounds like your kind of people? As I mentioned earlier, if you want to do an army in 25mm, Stratagem should soon be able to help. For those who prefer those nasty little 15mm things, there is not (as far as I know) an actual range available, but all you will need are naked archers with feathers – feathers in their hair, short feather kilts, feathers round forearms and ankles, a few feather cloaks – which constituted the only clothing that they wore. I am not sure of the shape of the shields, but they were not universal in any case, and contemporary pictures tend to show warriors without them. Perhaps this is not surprising if they had to manage a bow and a two-handed club as well! Certainly, figures could safely be fielded without shields if desired. Tupi warriors shaved the top of their heads like a monk’s tonsure. They painted themselves in various combinations of red and black. Sometimes a particular scheme would be adopted for a battle, in order to distinguish a tribe from its enemies: one lower leg painted red, in one documented case, although this was done on the advice of a late 16th century Cornishman. The Tupi were also tattooed with stripes – one for every enemy they had killed – and wore plugs of green jadeite in their lower lips. Where visible, their skins were a dark copper colour. The only other painting information necessary will be for the feathers. These were plucked from a huge variety of birds, and were usually left undyed. They could be almost any colour; red, blue and green were the most popular, but black, white, yellow, grey and brown feathers were also used. Some chiefs wore cloaks made entirely from the plumage of the scarlet ibis, but a mixture of colours in the same garment was also common. One 16th century picture shows a cloak made of alternating horizontal bands of green, red and blue feathers. So all in all this would be a different, colourful and quite useful army, suitable for both the Medieval and Renaissance periods. For the latter, it could also be jazzed up with a few men in European costume or carrying European weapons, as well as the Portuguese or French allies which should be allowed. In the late 16th century French traders provided some tribes, especially the Potiguar, with large numbers of swords and arquebuses. As for tactics, I will leave that to people more experienced with the rules, but you will need plenty of woods and other difficult terrain to avoid being ridden down by knights and the like. The stuff to get is Village Green’s resin ”impenetrable jungle” pieces, which come in 25mm, 15mm and 6mm scales, and the plastic aquarium foliage now being sold by Firebase Games. A nicely painted Tupi army, with its feathers and warpaint, hidden in the tropical forest, would make an impressive and, I should think, fairly terrifying sight for an opponent. I look forward to seeing some around in the near future.