“BANDEIRA!”

Introduction to Warfare on the Brazilian Frontier, 

16th to 18th Centuries

By Chris Peers

By the late seventeenth century the Portuguese had been in Brazil for nearly two hundred years, but, as might be expected of a maritime power, their settlements were still largely confined to the coast and parts of the valleys of the great rivers – the Paraná, São Francisco and Amazon. From these secure bases, however, armed expeditions known as bandeiras – from a medieval Portuguese term for a company of soldiers organised under a flag – had since the early sixteenth century set out regularly into the unexplored hinterland, or sertão, in search of gold or Indian slaves. Enslaving the natives was often justified on the grounds that they would at least be introduced to Christianity by their new masters, but the true driving force was the colonists’ need for acclimatised labour for their sugar plantations. Most of the bandeirantes, as the members of these raiding parties were known, originated from the São Paulo region in the south, hence their alternative name of Paulistas. Despite their despicable motives and the numerous atrocities they committed – they were even unprincipled enough to seize baptised Indians from the Jesuit missions – they became folk heroes to the Brazilians, and have remained so to this day. For their expeditions were also amazing feats of courage and endurance, which opened up new routes across the continent and claimed a vast area for the Portuguese crown. It is not generally realised, for instance, that the first European to reach the Inca Empire was in fact a Portuguese, Aleixo Garcia, who arrived in what is now Bolivia from the east in 1524 after an incredible march across the continent accompanied by 2000 Guarani Indians. Some of the countless native tribes which the invaders encountered were peaceful and trusting and inevitably were soon destroyed; others put up ferocious resistance in countless battles and skirmishes, while some, such as the Tupinambá, Carijó and Bororo, eventually found an outlet for their warlike traditions by joining the whites in campaigns against their neighbours. 

THE BANDEIRANTES AND THEIR ENEMIES 

Bandeiras varied in size from a dozen or so to several thousand strong, the larger ones being composed mostly of allied Indians equipped in their traditional style, usually as archers. The core of the force would comprise up to a few hundred Portuguese and mamelucos, or half-castes, wearing a variety of costume from simple loincloths to Spanish-style escaupil body armour of leather stuffed with cotton and even iron morion helmets; but, as most bandeiras travelled almost entirely on foot under the tropical sun, the sort of heavy armour still to be seen in seventeenth century Europe is likely to have been rare. The Portuguese tended to be heavily armed with matchlock muskets or arquebuses, flintlocks when available, pistols and swords, but some of the mamelucos preferred the bows of their Indian ancestors. Until the late sixteenth century crossbows were also common. The Portuguese in India were noted for their reliance on old and obsolescent weaponry, and this would probably have been the case in Brazil as well. Most bandeiras were accompanied by a flag, probably decorated with religious imagery in keeping with the fiction that their main motive was the conversion of the heathen, and some of the larger expeditions even managed to drag a light artillery piece or two over the narrow forest trails. Baggage was carried by mules or native porters, and a few of the leaders might ride horses. This is perhaps not an ideal subject for those who like to paint smartly dressed troops. Some expeditions lasted years, with no opportunity for resupply or replacement of worn out equipment. Hemming’, himself a veteran of many recent Brazilian expeditions, gives a vivid description of the appearance of even the best equipped bandeirantes after a week or two in the sertão:

”Their belongings must have become thoroughly worn and torn by the forest, soaked from the rains and the river rapids, and stained from the owner’s sweat, food, and the blood of’ innumerable scratches and insect bites. After a few weeks in the Brazilian forests, everything starts to smell of the mould of dead leaves that thickly carpet the ground. A bandeirante wore a kerchief and an old felt or leather hat, preferably with a brim against the ants, twigs and snakes that tumble out of jungle branches. He was thickly bearded. His shirts and underwear were cotton and his jacket and breeches of baize or coarse cloth. He wore stirrup stockings and tough hide boots.” 

Years of hardship and almost continuous small-scale fighting – ranging from ambushes and night raids on villages to formal sieges of Indian stockades – together with the fieldcraft of their Indian auxiliaries, made the bandeirantes the most experienced and successful Indian fighters in Brazil. Often their raiding tactics, their mobility and the flexibility of their small independent bands made them more effective against their elusive enemies than the Portuguese regulars, who were trained in European-style battlefield manoeuvres and were notoriously unskilled in tracking and supporting themselves in the wilderness. Eventually bandeirante captains began to be called upon as troubleshooters when settlers on the frontier. especially the cattle ranchers of the north-east, found their way inland blocked by warlike tribes.

By the second half of the seventeenth century the bandeiras thus found themselves fighting across almost the whole width of Brazil, marching thousands of miles in the process often across almost impassable terrain. Their opponents ranged from the Guarani of the Jesuit missions in Paraguay, who by the 1630s were organised and equipped in European fashion and often defended themselves successfully against the slavers, to the naked corso or roving tribes of the north-east, who avoided pitched battles and preferred to fight by means of ambushes and swift retreats. Even some of these, notably the Janduin who rebelled in 1687, possessed a significant number of firearms – bought illegally either from pirates who came up the rivers to trade, or from corrupt Portuguese soldiers. The more settled tribes sometimes defended their villages with stockades and engaged in close-range firefights which lasted for days, but in other cases the real problem lay not in defeating the Indians, but in finding them in the trackless forests. Although there was a great diversity of Indian peoples, with very different cultures and methods of fighting (see my article, ”The Other Wild West” (note 2 below), for some examples of the appearance and weaponry of a few of the more prominent tribes), some generalisations can be made here. Pre-colonial Brazil was still in the Stone Age, although from the early sixteenth century onwards metal knives, axes and arrowheads became popular trade items. Most tribes seem to have been primarily archers, though many, notably the Tupinambá and Kayapo. also had a reputation as deadly fighters with heavy wooden clubs. Spears, stone axes and blowguns were also used by some peoples, as well as the occasional oddity such as the tooth-studded jaws of piranha fish which the Guaicuru were reported as using in the 1540s. Apparently their technique was to seize a victim by the hair and simply saw through his neck with this fiendish weapon, twisting his head at the same time so that it came off ”with inconceivable facility”! European observers were unanimous in praising the skill of Indian archers and the ferocity with which they clubbed men to death if they fell in battle or were taken unawares, but it seems clear from most accounts that native weaponry was not really a match for the modern arms of the Portuguese. The bandeirantes’ padded armour was adequate to keep out arrows shot from any but the shortest ranges, as their generally low casualty figures show. An interesting illustration of this is Friar Gaspar de Carvajal’s account of Orellana’s 1542 Amazon expedition, consisting of about 50 Spanish soldiers, which was ceaselessly harassed by large numbers of Indians – on one occasion by as many as 5,000 Tapajós in over 200 canoes – but managed to beat off all attacks. Carvajal himself was twice seriously wounded by arrows, hut they had limited penetrating power and like most of his companions he survived the experience. After receiving one wound in the rib cage he remarked significantly that ”Had it not been for the thickness of my habit that would have been an end of me.” Arrows and blowgun darts were occasionally poisoned with curare. hut this does not seem to have been common. The effect of firearms, on the other hand, was enhanced by the shock and noise of massed volleys, particularly against men who had no previous experience of them. Standard practice was to pick off a native chief, whose death was often sufficient to cause an attack to collapse. The Guaicuru of Mato Grosso, who acquired horses from the Spanish in the sixteenth century and fought as charging lance-armed cavalry, were unique in this respect, as in many others. They achieved some startling victories against bandeirantes on foot, ironically reversing the imbalance which had been fatal to the Incas and Aztecs when they met the Spanish. Elsewhere, however, the Indians of Brazil fought entirely on foot or from canoes. When considering this subject for a wargame, therefore, we have to think of it almost as a sort of gunpowder-period Vietnam, with a heavily-armed force strong in firepower being frustrated by a more mobile enemy. Most engagements tended to be ambushes or surprise attacks on settlements, for the bandeirantes adopted the same tactics which had been used for millennia by the Indians in wars amongst themselves. The question often arises in cases like these of the extent to which the natives could be hampered by the different aims and expectations of ”primitive” warfare. It is usually argued, for instance, that the Aztecs of Mexico fought principally to capture prisoners, and so were at a disadvantage against the Spaniards’ ruthless desire to kill. Certainly there were and still are ritual elements to Brazilian Indian warfare, the leading warriors of some tribes fighting arranged duels with heavy clubs for example, but few of the inland tribes seem to have bothered much with prisoners (unlike the coastal Tupinambá, who fattened them up and ate them), and in the wars against the bandeirantes they were essentially fighting for self- preservation, using whatever tactics they thought necessary. As time went on some peoples, especially the Janduins and Canoeiros of the north-east, became increasingly familiar with European warfare and tried to adapt its methods to their own needs. Anthony Knivet, an Englishman who lived with a Tupinambá group in the late sixteenth century, even claimed that he taught them the use of ambush tactics, which had previously been unknown to these rather reckless warriors. So we need not restrict the players’ tactical options here – although inter-tribal conflict, which may at times be fought under different rules, could become the subject of another game. Most Brazilian tribes supplemented their hunting and fishing by agriculture, and so were able to sustain themselves in sizeable villages, between which there was frequent communication. When the powerful Mura of the Amazon surrendered late in the eighteenth century, for example, the whites were amazed to find that bands on widely separated tributaries came in to the military posts and missions at exactly the same time, using the same agreed password – evidence of a previously unsuspected level of organisation. Political and military organisation was based on units often several thousands strong. The tiny, fragmented hunting-hand societies of some of today’s jungle tribes, where the largest unit is the family, are largely a product of adaptation to marginal environments and social disruption caused by European conquest, and were not really typical of the peoples who figure in accounts of our period. Although accurate numbers for Indian forces are difficult to come by, it is therefore likely that they would often number in the hundreds. 

”They are verie resolute and desperate; as swifte of foot as any Horse. These Canibals... (are so desperate that five or six of them will set upon a Sugar house, where there are at least one hundred persons; and I have seene one of them take a man alive and defende himselfe with his prisoner, as if one of us would defend ourselves with a Target.”
Anthony Knivet (1591) on the Aimoré tribe. 

”Anyone who has seen them busy with their bows will agree with me that... (hey can draw and shoot them so fast that... our savages... would have fired off’ a dozen while (the English) would have released six... 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, bur slaughtered him as one of our butchers fells an ox... Apart from the entertainment of watching them jump, whistle and wield their swords, circling and bobbing, it was also marvellous to see so many arrows with their great plumage of red, blue, green, scarlet and many other coloured feathers flying through the air...”
Jean de Léry, 1575, describing a Tupinambá battle. 

THE BRAZILIAN ENVIRONMENT 

Another factor which we need to take into consideration when designing a game based on these campaigns is the terrain. By no means all of Brazil is covered by the tall tropical rainforests which we associate (for the time being at least) with Amazonia; in fact these jungles were seldom the scene of much fighting, except along the major rivers, until the rubber boom of the nineteenth century led the tappers or seringueiros off the beaten track in search of fresh trees to tap. When dealing with a country the size of Europe it is necessary to generalise a great deal, hut as a rough guide we can say that the north-east, where the Sugar War was fought between Portuguese and Dutch in the 1640s and where ranchers confronted such fierce fighters as the Janduin, is fairly dry scrub and savannah. with frequent tall termite hills providing useful bullet-proof cover. Mato Grosso in the south-west, where the bandeirantes met the Jesuit-trained Guarani and the horse-riding Guaicuru, is hilly and more densely wooded, hut with many relatively open areas on the high ground between the rivers. This would also apply to provinces like Goias, between São Paulo and the southern tributaries of the Amazon. In all cases, though, thick jungle might be encountered along the rivers. The Indians, naturally, were experts at making the hest use of the terrain in the areas where they lived and hunted. Even where there was little cover an expedition rarely saw them unless they wanted to be found –  the exception being when an unwary camp or village was betrayed from miles away by its smoke rising into a clear sky. Although the bandeirantes tended to he excellent woodsmen by European standards, our rules should nevertheless include a bias in favour of the natives when stalking or hiding in ambush. Particularly in dense forest, even sound is an unreliable way of detecting an enemy because there is always so much going on all around: 

”Tiny constant rustlings, cheepings, pipings, hissings, indicating the myriad small life of the forest... the never-ceasing rain of solid particles – leaves, twigs, fruits, fragments of bark, petals Sometimes larger objects drop with a startling thump; sometimes some creature moves stealthily through the forest – never is the forest quiet.”
Nicholas Guppy.

It is easy to imagine how nerve-racking it would be to have to try and isolate the sounds of an Indian moving stealthily through the forest just beyond the limits of sight. In thick forest or scrub naked Indians should be able to move faster and more easily than civilisados, whose clothes would catch on thorns or branches; it would also be reasonable to introduce a chance of the lock or trigger of a flintlock musket catching in a branch and discharging the piece prematurely. One of Stratagem’s figures (see below) is shouldering his musket in a very dangerous position from this point of view, and it would certainly be, advisable not to deploy a leader figure directly in front of this one when on the march through a forest! Discussion of terrain leads us on to another hazard of the Brazilian wilderness which can be used to add realism and excitement to a game, and that is the local wildlife. The problem is not so much the spectacular stuff like jaguars or crocodiles, neither of which seem to do much harm to people, but the smaller creatures, especially the insects. Many parts of Brazil are overrun with stinging ants, bees and hornets, and a random sprinkling of their nests marked on a map by an umpire in tracts of otherwise inviting cover could provide an amusing diversion: 

”... swarms of insect pests... in the bushes and forest shade mosquitoes swarmed in such incredible numbers that they had to be brushed aside before one could arm a gun!”
G.K. Cherrie on the Rio Pilomayo. 

Then there are the snakes; especially the 5ft deadly poisonous bushmaster and the up to 40ft non-poisonous anaconda, which simply crushes you to death. When wading rivers barefoot, piranhas, stingrays and electric eels are available to add to the fun. In most cases Indians should be better able to spot these dangers than civilisados. though treading on a stingray hidden in the mud of a river bed seems to he a frequent cause of injury even for them. Just to add to the atmosphere of my games, I have a cassette tape of sounds from the Amazon forests – mostly birds, but also including Indian songs, howler monkeys, jaguars etc. It helps to get players into the spirit of the mysterious and rather frightening jungle and even provides a few surprises which could be worked into the game. The howler monkey in particular makes a horrific racket. something like a pride of man-eating jaguars would sound if there was such a thing, and if you let the Bandeirante players think that whatever is making the noise is waiting to drop out of the next tree. they will no doubt be suitably wary! 

SETTING UP A GAME 

So all of the above – tactics, terrain, the superiority of native fieldcraft and the animate ”perils of the jungle” – can be used to provide a skirmish game with an unusual emphasis. The bandeirantes’ task may he to surprise a village, fight their way out of an ambush or simply get from one end of the table to the other. The Indian players on the other hand will he frustrated by their inability to finish off the enemy by conventional tactics, and will have to make the best use of their advantages – swift and silent mobility across country, camouflage, and the psychological advantage of knowing the country. This type of scenario might lend itself quite well to a game with umpire-controlled Indians and all the players taking on the role of the bandeirantes, although personally I feel that this approach is too often used to dodge the issue of how to represent the tactics and motivation of alien military cultures, thus depriving us of much of the unique interest of a particular subject. There are plenty of rules which could be adapted to these scenarios, so I do not think it is necessary to recommend a specific set. It would even be possible to refight some of the larger encounters using a mainstream ”big battle” set with a 1:20 figure ratio, such as the WRG 1420-1685 rules, hut I feel that a one-to-one skirmish game would generally be more suitable. Much depends on the size of game you prefer and thus the level of detail which is required; having resolved that problem, any of the above features which you think are worth including can be added to specific scenarios.

FIGURE AVAILABILITY*

Luckily, thanks to our beloved Editor’s interest in early colonial warfare, there is already a range of 25mm figures on the market for this most obscure of subjects. Stratagem’s ”Sugar Wars” range currently comprises approximately a dozen bandeirantes and mamelucos (plus three dead and wounded) and four Indians, and there are apparently plans to extend it. The bandeirantes are based mainly on some rather old-fashioned figures painted by Jean-Baptiste Debret around 1820, and on mid-seventeenth century pictures by Albert Eckhout. They include Portuguese musketeers in quilted armour and boots, as well as mamelucos in varying states of undress, and capture the feel of these desperate and rather scruffy adventurers pretty well. My own favourite is the kneeling mameluco with a musket, although I do not know whether his apparent resemblance to Duncan (at least when painted up by me) is coincidence or not! The Indians are long-haired and naked, carry bows and clubs and arc obviously based on the Janduin of the north-east, who fought as allies of the Dutch against both bandeirantes and Portuguese regulars in the seventeenth century. These figures would also do for any of the related nomadic tribes of eastern and central Brazil, including the famous Chavantes who continued to resist settlers well into this century. I look forward to seeing some more Indians appear eventually, perhaps from a different tribe. The elaborate feather decorations worn by people like the Tupinambá, Kayapo and Bororo would make a particularly attractive subject. As for terrain, Village Green’s ”impassable jungle” pieces, though fairly expensive, deserve an honourable mention. As a bonus, they are not in fact quite impassable; they come in two sections – tree trunks, and canopies – and the trunks are hollow, so that ambushing Indians can be hidden inside. 

NOTES 

1. John Hemming, Red Gold (Macmillan 1987), p.247. This is an indispensable book for anyone interested in pursuing the subject. as is the second volume of this history: Amazon Frontier. 
2. See Hemmings again, and also my article, ”The Other Wild West” (Wargames World no. 4 – copies still available!). 

Also worth special mention is The Amazon, Past, Present and Future by Alain Gheerbrant (the man who made the first peaceful contact with the Yanomami in the 1950s), English translation published by Thames and Hudson in 1992. Among the documents assembled in this little book are numerous colour pictures of Indians dating from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries – a very useful source for figure painters and modellers.