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. '
