Indians in the "Brazilwood War"

16th Century Colonial Conflicy in the Americas

By Ian Heath

When it became apparent, at the end of the 15th century, that both Spain and Portugal considered their respective voyages of exploration to give them undisputed claim to all newly-discovered lands, they were prevailed upon by Pope Alexander VI to agree that Spain should take possession of all undiscovered lands lying west of a meridian drawn some 370 leagues to the west of the Cape Verde Islands, while Portugal should have all those to its east. Unexpectedly (and unintentionally) this was subsequently found to have allotted one significant corner of the New World to the Portuguese - namely Brazil, which was discovered in 1500.

Existing commitments in Asia and Africa rendered the conquest and colonisation of Brazil a difficult proposition for Portugal, and from the outset its claim to the region was hotly contested by the French, who refused to acknowledge the validity of the Iberian powers' unilateral claim to the undiscovered world. French ships had started to appear off the Brazilian coast by 1504 at the latest, landing their crews to establish friendly relations and alliances with the local Indians and to load up with the valuable brazilwood which gave the country its name. The Portuguese had little choice but to put up with these trespassers for several years, but finally felt obliged to commence military operations against them following the establishment of a permanent French trading post in 1516. The first shots in this undeclared 'brazilwood war' were fired the same year, and it was to drag on intermittently but inexorably for the remainder of the century.

Despite its frequent successes in the conflict, Portugal's hold on Brazil remained tenuous, and prior to the 1540s the country was as much French as it was Portuguese. However, both sides' resources were limited in the extreme, which led to a heavy dependence on the military support of local Indian tribes, the French in particular taking full advantage of their own good relations with the natives at every opportunity. Up to 1,500 Tamoyo Indians, for instance, assisted in the defence of the only substantial French colony established during the century - 'Fort Coligny', on Guanabara Island near modern Río de Janeiro - but were unable to prevent its destruction in 1560 by the Portuguese, who were accompanied by perhaps 2,000 Indian auxiliaries of their own. And when, after two days of fighting, the survivors of its French garrison slipped away to the mainland, it was their Tamoyo allies who gave them sanctuary. This enabled the French to maintain a small but significant presence around Guanabara Bay for several years more, assisting in the fortification of several Indian villages and the emplacement of 'much artillery'. It took until 1567 for the Portuguese and their Tememinó Indian allies to raze the Tamoyo forts and extirpate the 'many Frenchmen' found among their defenders.

Despite the fact that the French and Tamoyo were defeated repeatedly on land throughout the 1570s, and lost numerous vessels to the Portuguese at sea, French ships nevertheless continued to frequent Guanabara Bay in search of cargoes of brazilwood. However, the main theatre of French operations nowshifted north to Paraíba and Sergipe, where Frenchmen seem to have been encountered helping the Indians in almost every campaign that the Portuguese launched against the Potiguara and Tupinambá tribes from the 1570s until the end of the century. They were even present in sufficient numbers on some occasions for their drums to be heard and French flags to be seen flying among the Indians.

The ongoing failure of the Portuguese to secure control of the entire coastline continued to cost them dear, enabling the French to cling tenaciously to their precarious footholds and obliging the Portuguese to rely on the dangerous sea route for communication, where monsoon conditions frequently caused their forces to suffer unfortunate delays or considerable losses. However, a successful campaign against the Tupinambá tribe in 1589-90 finally secured them a land-route between Bahía and Pernambuco, and enabled them to oust the French from Sergipe. The French nevertheless continued to maintain a strong presence in Potiguara territory - the districts of Paraíba and Río Grande do Norte at the northeast tip of Brazil - until the end of the century. Even after the Portuguese had made considerable headway into this region in 1597-99 almost a thousand miles of unoccupied coastline between Río Grande do Norte and the mouth of the Amazon remained open to French traders, and the French threat only came to an end with the elimination in 1615 of the settlement they had constructed on Maranhão island in 1612.

THE INDIANS

The sheer volume of Indian tribes bewildered early explorers with whom they came into contact in coastal Brazil. The most important, however, were the cannibalistic Tupí, a term that embraced numerous related tribes of whom the most significant were the Tupinambá (including the Tamoyo and Ararape), Tupinikin (or Margaya), Tobayara, Potiguara, Tupina, Temiminó, and Caeté. When the Europeans arrived these tribes were themselves relatively new arrivals, having only recently overrun most of the Brazilian coastline from the mouth of the Amazon southwards beyond modern São Paulo. Each tribe consisted of numerous palisaded villages made up of four to eight communal houses, each of which could accommodate up to 30 families. These villages moved location about once every five years. The Potiguara were considered the most powerful Tupí people, Martím Leitão (1585) describing their tribe as 'the largest and most united of any in Brazil', while Gabriel Soares de Sousa (1587) reported that they were able to field

Inter-tribal warfare was endemic among the Tupí (a Portuguese report of 1531 stated that 'every two leagues they are at war with one another'), providing victims for their sacrificial rituals and cannibalism. Consequently the various tribes had no qualms about allying themselves with the Portuguese and French. The Tupinambá and Temiminó could be found fighting for both sides, but the Tamoyo, Caeté, and the powerful Potiguara of Paraíba fought solely for the French, while the Tupinikin and Tobayara fought principally for the Portuguese. However, the Tupinikin rebelled in 1562, and in 1584 an avaricious slaver's treachery drove the Tobayara to ally with their traditional Potiguara enemies against the Portuguese, so that the authorities had to resort to arms to win them back.

The Tamoyo and Potiguara achieved frequent successes against the Portuguese in the second half of the century. In the course of the 1560s, however, the Tamoyo were gradually pushed inland, and in 1575 they were all but destroyed. When a shipwrecked Englishman, Anthony Knivet, encountered them in 1597 he nevertheless found them to be still 'the most mortal enemies that the Portuguese have in all America', but in attempting to retake their conquered lands that year under his guidance the last survivors were annihilated, a third being killed and the rest captured and enslaved. By 1587 the Caeté had also been exterminated. Some Potiguara, on the other hand, managed to maintain a shaky peace with the Portuguese from 1560 until 1574, though warfare was continuous thereafter for the rest of the century. An anonymous Jesuit wrote of the Potiguara in 1584 that '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.' French brazilwood merchants provided them with arms, and by 1584 were teaching them how to construct earthworks complete with towers and trenches, reinforced with logs as a defence against artillery fire. Such fortifications were employed by the Potiguara during the siege of a Portuguese fort on the Paraíbo River in 1584-85, and Martím Leitão describes one he encountered in 1585 which had seven trenches, three towers, log barricades, and booby-traps comprising trees released by trip-wires to fall on the attackers. After years of fighting, the Potiguara signed a treaty with the Portuguese only in 1599, and after a final revolt in 1601 capitulated for good, their energies thereafter being channelled inland against the unsubdued Aimoré tribes.

The principal weapon among the Tupí was a bow that, to judge from contemporary woodcuts, was usually some 6½-7 ft (2-2.1 m) long. Jean de Léry (1556) says it was made of red or black wood, André Thevet (1558) describing these materials respectively as a type of cane that grew on the coast, and hayri, a black palmwood so heavy that it would sink 'like iron' in water. The stave was apparently decorated with inlaid marquetry patterns using coloured wood, and the bowstring was dyed green or red. 'Their bows are so much longer and stronger than those we have,' wrote de Léry, 'that one of our men could scarcely draw one, far less shoot it ... They can draw and shoot them so fast that, with due respect to the good English bowmen, our savages - holding their supply of arrows in the hand with which they hold the bow - would have fired off a dozen while [the English] would have released six'. Hans Staden (1557) and Pero de Magalhães (1576) likewise reported that 'they shoot very rapidly' and that they were such skilful archers that 'it is a marvel for one of them to miss his mark no matter how difficult it may be.' The Potiguara in particular are said to have been such accurate shots that 'an arrow fired by them never misses'. The arrows themselves were an ell long (45 ins/1.1 m), made of reed with flights consisting of two long feathers of 'rose-colour, blue, red, and green, and of such like colours'. They were tipped with fish or animal teeth, bone, or barbed heads carved from hayri, or simply had their tips sharpened and fire-hardened. These traditional arrowheads began to be replaced by nails and other types of iron blade following the arrival of the French and Portuguese. Thevet reported that their arrows were 'so strong that they will pierce a good mail corselet', while a Portuguese eyewitness wrote in 1601 that Tupí arrows could go through 'quilted breastplates or curates'. Their other main weapon was the tacape, a flat, paddle-shaped club made of heavy red or black wood, with an oval or circular head, about an inch thick, with edges described as 'very finely sharpened'. This could be up to 5-6 ft (1.5-1.8 m) long, and was most often wielded two-handed. Like the bow, it might have a pattern of coloured wood inlaid into it, and its handle was often decorated with feathers, particularly during celebrations.

Traditional Tupí tactics were 'to skirmish together, more on nights than on days', skirmishes and surprise night-attacks on enemy settlements being preferred over pitched battles. Attacks on villages (which were invariably palisaded) were launched at dawn to the sound of gourd trumpets, fire-arrows being shot into the roofs of the huts and the occupants killed or captured as they fled. A village expecting such an attack would plant swathes of wooden spikes beyond the palisade 'to gall and pierce the feet of their enemies', thereby giving warning of the attack. On those occasions where a pitched battle occurred they would draw up in a mass phalanx. Jean de Léry says that as soon as the two sides came within 200-300 yds (180-275 m) they 'greeted one another' with a hail of arrows, Magalhães relating that it was 'a very strange sight to see two or three thousand naked men on opposing sides shooting with bows and arrows at one another with loud shouts and cries, all hopping about with great agility from one spot to another so that the enemy was unable to take aim or shoot at any definite individual'. Men hit by arrows simply tore them out and returned to the fray. 'When they were finally in a melee with their great wooden swords and clubs,' wrote de Léry, 'they charged one another with mighty two-handed blows', and thereafter it was a fight to the finish, each warrior fighting for as long as he could move his arms and legs. All of those taken alive, men, women, and children, Indians and Europeans alike, were sacrificially executed and eaten. However, this might not occur for a considerable time afterwards, some prisoners even having time to marry and bear children during their captivity.

Regarding the battlefield comportment of Tupí warriors, Amerigo Vespucci wrote after his voyage of 1501-2 that 'there is no order or discipline in their fights, except that they follow the counsels of the old men.' Magalhães likewise noted that they fought in a disorderly fashion 'and often countermand one another's orders to the point of quarrelling, because they have no captain to restrain them.' Thevet says that the Tupí greatly feared the noise of firearms, but they seem to have soon become accustomed to it, the same chronicler recording that a huge Tamoyo chief named Cunhambebe carried two 'great muskets' into battle against the Temiminó. From a picture in Thevet's La Cosmographie Universelle (1575), which shows them being fired from Cunhambebe's shoulders by one of his warriors (Cunhambebe stands with his back to the enemy for this operation), it is clear that the pieces in question, said to have been captured from a Portuguese ship, are swivels or wall-guns, capable of firing bullets which Thevet claims were 'as large as a tennis ball'.

Like other Brazilian tribes, those Tupí living on the coast or along the great rivers also made considerable use of canoes, which are described as being made out of 'the bark of a single tree'. These could carry up to 20-30 warriors. The Tamoyo were even prepared to engage the Portuguese - who themselves made considerable use of native canoes - on the open sea, and were sometimes victorious in such encounters.

As regards their appearance, Léry says that the Tupí were 'of a tawny shade, like the Spaniards or Provençals'. Beyond an occasional penis-string, or at the very most a sheath of leaves round the genitals (sometimes worn by old men), they largely went naked, especially in combat, when any clothes they possessed - and these were a commodity distributed freely among them by the French and traded with them by the Portuguese - being taken off beforehand. Instead they decorated themselves for battle with paint, or by using resin to glue finely chopped red and white feathers to their bodies, Knivet describing how some warriors covered themselves with 'feathers of diverse colours, in such order that you could not have seen a spot of their skins but their legs'. Various sources tell us that they painted themselves completely black (described by one observer as 'bluish-black'), or with one arm and leg black and the other red, or with their body painted in red and black quarters or even 'in chequered patterns'. Léry says that it was 'especially their custom to blacken their thighs and legs [so] that seeing them from a little distance, you would think they had donned the hose of a priest'. Thevet records the men's bodies being painted with 'a thousand delights ... such as figures of birds or waves of the sea', these presumably being the 'white lines' that another eye-witness says were painted over their blackened bodies. Pero Vaz de Caminha (1500) records that the Tupinambá in addition had 'their foreheads painted from temple to temple ... with a black paint, which looks like a black ribbon the breadth of two fingers.' The 'Anonymous Narrative' of Pedro Alvares Cabral's expedition (1500) adds that they also painted their eyelids and 'over their eyebrows' with 'figures of white and black and blue and red.' In addition all Tupí might be extensively scarred or tattooed, the Tupinambá cutting a long scar, with black pigment rubbed into it, for every enemy slain, so that the area of the body covered grew according to the number of victims killed or captured. Knivet saw warriors with 'all their bodies ... carved from the face to the feet'. Feather headdresses were also worn, notably by the Tamoyo, who Knivet recorded as having 'their heads always set with feathers of divers colours'. Hans Staden recorded that the Tupinambá adorned themselves 'with red feathers so that they may distinguish their friends from their foes.' Caminha wrote that they wore caps of yellow, red, and green feathers, but it is clear from pictorial sources that these were for use only during feasts and on ceremonial occasions.

For jewellery warriors wore necklaces strung with their victims' teeth (archaeologists have found examples with up to 3,000) and chieftains wore long necklaces of snow-white snail-shell beads, all wound several times round the neck. They also sported bone or white, blue, or green stone lip-plugs, which Caminha describes as being 'the length of a handbreadth, and the thickness of a cotton spindle and as sharp as an awl at the end'. Antonio Pigafetta (1520) states that almost every Tupí had 'three holes in the lower lip and wear small round stones about a finger in length hanging from them'. Staden says that Tupinambá chieftains and medicine-men wore up to seven similar plugs in their cheeks, while Peter Carder, who lived among the Tupinambá in 1578-79, says that depending on how many men a warrior had killed 'so many holes they will have in their visage, beginning first in their nether lip, then in their cheeks, thirdly in both their eyebrows, and lastly in their ears.' Vespucci records these being made of 'blue stones, bits of marble, very beautiful crystals of [white or green] alabaster, very white bones', and claims that some of them were up to 'a span and a half' long (9 ins/23 cm); however, the small bone cheek-plugs of a Brazilian Indian who was shown to King Henry VIII in 1531 were described by Richard Hakluyt as protruding just 'an inch out from the said holes'. Sticks of bone were also worn in up to three holes in the ears, and sometimes through the wings of the nose. Some wore shell ear-pendants.

FIGURES

1. This is a Tupí warrior as depicted in woodcuts by Johann Froschauer and Hans Burgkmair dating to 1505 and c.1516-19 respectively (based on a mixture of verbal descriptions and actual artefacts brought back by early explorers) and a later woodcut commissioned by Ulisse Aldrovandi (d.c.1605). The Millar Atlas of c.1519 renders the various feather adornments worn here in alternating combinations of red, blue, yellow and green. The feather 'skirt' is possibly what Pigafetta had in mind when he described the Tupí wearing 'a hoop surrounded by the largest parrot feathers, with which they cover the private parts and backside only'.

2 - 4. The Tupinambá or Tupinikin warriors depicted in Figures 2 and 3 are from woodcuts in Hans Staden's account of his captivity among the Tupinambá from 1552-55 (he was a German gunner serving the Portuguese), while Figure 4 comes from a picture of a battle between Tupinambá and Tupinikin warriors illustrating Jean de Léry's account of the French colony at 'Fort Coligny'. The characteristic Tupí hair-style was described as comprising 'a bare space on the head with a circle of hair round it like a monk' (see Figures 5 and 8), which led to the Portuguese nicknaming them Caboclos or 'Baldies'; however, this description does not tally with Staden's pictures, which by contrast show the whole head shaved except for a shaggy tuft towards the back. Possibly, therefore, the Tupinambá and Tupinikin differed from other Tupí in this regard. Despite believing that if they grew beards or had their hair long at the front 'they might be seized and captured by these', some Tupinambá emulated the appearance of their French allies by growing beards. However, they plucked out all other facial and body hair. The device worn at the small of the back, called an enduap, was of grey rhea feathers attached to a large ball of gum that was suspended from the shoulder by a cotton string. The headdress of red feathers was called a kannittare.

5. Maranhão, Tupinambá warrior from a woodcut of 1614. Note the tattoos, which seem to be the same as those that Knivet indicated were typical of the neighbouring Potiguara. He described the latter as having their bodies 'all carved with very fine works, and in their lips they make a hole ... and wear a green stone therein, and he that hath not this fashion is counted a peasant.' The feathers covering his private parts may be a coy nicely introduced by the French artist. The shoulder strap presumably has something to do with the way his bow is suspended behind his right hip, possibly supporting a quiver to which the bow is in some way attached. Certainly engravings by Theodor de Bry dating to the end of the century show a quiver at the right hip.

6-8. These are Tamoyo warriors. Knivet tells us that the Tamoyo 'have their heads always set with feathers' and that they wore the same sort of green stone in their lips as the Potiguara. Figures 6 and 7 are based on the descriptions and woodcuts of André Thevet, while Figure 8, with his body considerably scarred to denote the number of enemies he has slain, is from Léry's book. Note the crescent-shaped pectoral suspended by a cotton thread, worn at the chest by Figures 7 and 8 like an 18th century officer's gorget. Léry describes these as being 'more than half a foot long, made of ... bone, white as alabaster', but other sources describe them being of black palmwood.

The arquebus of Figure 7 and the knife hanging at Figure 6's back are gifts from the French, who liberally distributed firearms amongst the Tupí tribes in the hope that they would be used against the Portuguese. By 1546 at the very latest the Portuguese too were trading arquebuses and swords to their Tupinikin allies in exchange for brazilwood. Thevet records that the Tamoyo carried firearms with them when they went to war but that they did not then (1558) know how to use them effectively, but 'shoot them off just to scare their enemies', and on other occasions put too much powder in them so that they blew up, killing or wounding whoever fired them. Nevertheless they were fast learners, and in 1560 governor Mem de Sá reported that the French garrison of 'Fort Coligny' included Tamoyo who were 'just as good arquebusiers as the French.' Mem de Sá and José de Anchieta (1565) both noted that the French had provided the Tamoyo with 'many arquebuses and powder and swords', and a Jesuit report of 1575 records that the 'many weapons' the Tamoyo of Cabo Frio had received from the French included daggers, swords, broadswords, arquebuses, and even 'cannon' (apparently light swivels are intended). However, many Tamoyo or Potiguara villages possessed few or no firearms; a large Potiguara village attacked by the Portuguese in 1598, for instance, had only a dozen arquebuses.

Thevet describes Tupí shields as 'very long' (though woodcuts in his book show them as oval and of no great size) and by Léry as 'broad, flat, and round, like the bottom of a German drum.' Theodor de Bry's engravings, however, show Tupí tribesmen with shields about 3 ft (91 cm) long, with curved edges. Very probably there was some variation in the shape and size from tribe to tribe. They were made of bark, or tapir or manatee hide, Thevet describing the hide ones as being 'of divers colours like the cattle of France', while Lopes de Sousa (1531) says they were 'painted like ours', whatever that means. Thevet adds that they were strong enough to 'bear out the shot of a handgun'. Léry states that they were used only 'to receive the arrows of the enemy', and not during hand-to-hand combat, though it is in the latter role that they appear in one of his woodcuts.

This article is condensed from Foundry Books' latest publication, 'Armies of the 16th Century: THE ARMIES OF THE AZTEC AND INCA EMPIRES, OTHER NATIVE PEOPLES OF THE AMERICAS, AND THE CONQUISTADORES, 1450-1608. '