The Tupinambá (Final)

Portuguese Onslaught

In a text, written in Bahia around 1583 by the Jesuit Luís da Fonseca, describes the beginning of the Portuguese colonization, when the sugar mills began to be installed on the coast.

The [indigenous] people that are spent in Bahia, seemed to be something that cannot be believed, because no one has ever taken care that so many people were never spent, let alone in such a short time. Because in the 14 churches that the priests had, 40,000 souls were gathered together.

[...] From six years to this part, the Portuguese always drew people to their farms ... what could this add up, if they arrive or exceed 80 thousand souls. If you now see the mills and farms of Bahia, you will find them full of Guinean blacks and very few of the land, and ask themselves for so many [indigenous people] that they will say that they died, where the great punishment of God is shown for as many insults as they are made, and are made to these Indians.

[...] Because the Portuguese go into the wilderness and deceive these people, telling them to come with them to the [coastal] sea and that they will be in their villages as they are in their land and would be their neighbors. The Indians, believing it to be true, see with them and the Portuguese, so that the Indians do not repent, they soon dismantle all their fields, and so they bring them and arrive at the sea, they divide them among themselves, some take women, husbands, other children and sell them.

Other Portuguese in the sertão [outback] shake [the Indians] by saying that they bring them to the parish churches, and with that they are shaken by their lands, because they already know all over the sertão that only people who are in the churches, where the [Jesuit ] reside, have freedom, that all else is captive.

The Portuguese go to 250 to 300 leagues [1,500 to 1,800 kilometers] to seek this Gentile for being far away, and since the land is already depopulated, the more of them dies along the road to hunger, and some Portuguese have taken, by the way Gentile against those who bring, they kill and give them to eat, so that they can support them.

Violence against the indigenous nations in America was not exclusive to the Spanish. The Portuguese were also extremely harsh. In a report Mem de Sá the third governor-general of Brazil wrote:

In these times the governor's message came as the Gentile [indigenous] tupinikim of the Ilheus captaincy had taken refuge and had killed Christians and destroyed and burned all the mills of the places, and the inhabitants were surrounded and ate nothing but oranges. Soon I put [the council] together, and since many were of the opinion that it was not for having neither the power to resist them nor the power of the emperor, I went with few people who followed me.

The night I entered Ilhéus I went on foot to a village that was seven leagues from the village on a small high, all surrounded by water, around ponds. And I destroyed it and killed all those who wanted to resist, and on the coming I came burning and destroying all the villages that were left behind. Because the Gentile gathered and followed me along the beach, I made some snares to them, where I surrounded them and forced them to take to the sea and [very] wild coast.

I sent other Indians behind them, who followed them about two leagues and fought in the sea so that no Tupinikim were alive. And they brought them to the earth and set them along the beach in order [so] that they took their bodies [aligned] near a league.

I made many other exits in which I destroyed many strongholds and fought with them other times when many were killed and wounded and no longer dared to be but in the hills and rocky terrain where they killed dogs and roosters and, embarrassed of the necessity, they came asking for mercy and them I gave up on condition that they were to be the vassals of His Highness [the King] and pay taxes and make the mills again. All accepted and made and stayed the peaceful land in space of thirty days. I did this at my expense by giving every honest person an allowance.

(Letter from Mem de Sá to the King of Portugal, dated 31/3/1560 In Silva Campos, Chronicle of the captaincy of St. George of Ilhéus, Rio de Janeiro, MEC / Federal Council of Culture, 1981. page 44)