Tupis

Tupis borrowed their name from the language which they speak, the tupi (see Précision). In fact, Tupis were in the beginning seven tribes various but all dependant between them by only one and even language. They controlled the sides of the Brésil, as well as most of the interior of the country. It is supposed that they arrived more tardily on these territories, coming from north from what is the Paraguay today, tracing their territory at the expense of less aggressive tribes.

Meet with Europeans

The Européens met for the first time Tupis when they discovered the Brésil. In 1507, the ships Portuguese furrowing the African coasts were let carry and visited only very briefly the continent. Descriptions made of Tupis by the first travellers venture with the Brazil, shocked and woke up the curiosity of Europe. Tupis had a simple life based on the Chasse and the Agriculture and they walked completely naked. They were not very attached to the concept of property. They made marvellous hosts for the explorers and the tradesmen who sought Brazilian Bois and work for some Babiole S and other tools in Fer.

After a more thorough stay in contact with the Tupi culture, it proved much more complex than it had not appeared at the beginning. The majority of the grounds which they occupied were tropical forests which could not be used for agriculture and did not abound in wild animals. The ground sections were to be cleared then cultivated that for a few seasons and were to be abandoned when the ground became exhausted. The populations were thus to thus move constantly, which caused frictions with the close populations and a quasi permanent state of Guerre.

In fact, Tupis were frightening warriors. The wars to which they were delivered had the goal to maintain the population of the area under their control. They were excellent gunners with the arc, but just like the Aztèques, they preferred the Massue S. the main aim of the combat was to capture prisoners. They were temporarily reduced in slavery then eaten at the time of very elaborate rites intended to make furious the other tribes and to encourage other wars. The prisoners brought labor but were also a source of Protéine S. According to the terms of their culture, it was an honor to be eaten in these circumstances.

In spite of their Cannibalism and the other exotic characteristics of their culture, Tupis and Europeans lived in good terms during more than one generation after being themselves mutually discovered. Tupis worked to provide the Brazilian wood logs and to exchange them against iron tools and babioles. However, all wood necessary, if easy to obtain, ends up being output and Tupis obtained all the tools and babioles which they wished. They lost soon any interest for the trade of the goods and refused to work under any circumstance. Their population was decreasing because of the imported diseases of Europe, which touched the whole of the population. They preferred to turn over to their original lifestyle, from now on made easier thanks to better tools.

But Europeans were not going to let make. The meadows which skirted the cleared coast and Brazilian forests offered an ideal ground for the culture of the Canne to sugar and although this very advantageous culture required an intensive work. When that Tupis refused to work, the growers started to buy prisoners in Tupis to use them like labor and encouraged the wars of reciprocal destruction to make more prisoners. According to the policy of Europeans, better was worth to kill a slave with work than to eat it, a point of view that did not divide Tupis.

End of Tupis

When the trade of the prisoners did not bring any more adequate labor, the European colonists gradually came from there to make the war in Tupis. In very little time, the Tupis tribes which populated the coast were decimated made wars and diseases, were controlled or driven out towards the interior of the grounds. The hunters of slaves went up the rivers towards the tropical forest with the research of the “Red gold”. Europeans justified, calling upon the practices cannibals of Tupis and their refusal of the Christianisme.

Tupis disappeared from the majority of the grounds which they occupied at the time of the first contact with Europeans. Their descendants survive today in the tropical forests threatened of Brazil.

Precision

In Ethnology, the term tupi returns to the Amerindian groups whose languages belong to the trunk tupi.

Classically, the term gathers the people which lived the Atlantic littoral of current the Brésil, since the State of Rio de Janeiro until north of the State of Bahia, even until the States of the Pará O of Amazonas, according to certain authors. In a broader direction, by their cultural and ethnic similarities, one often joins together the tupis and the Guarani S (which occupied the south and the south-east of Brazil, as well as the Paraguay and the Bolivia) in the great ethnicity and linguistics of the " Tupi-Guarani ".

Random links: